DELICATE FEASTING 



DELICATE FEASTING 



BY 



THEODORE CHILD 

AUTHOR OF "SUMMER HOLIDAYS" ETC. 




NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1890 

LIBRARY 
JL'L14 1890 



^•^?:' 






/ 



<r^7 



Y y 



■ TO 

MY DEAR FRIEND 
AND INSEPARABLE DINING COMPANION 

P. Z. DIDSBURY 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS 

3ietiicatcti 

IN SOUVENIR OF 

MANY GASTRONOMIC TRIUMPHS ENJOYED 

IN HIS COMPANY 



INTRODUCTION. 



A LETTER FROM P. Z. DIDSBURY TO THE 
AUTHOR. 

MV DEAR A UTHOR, — 

/ have read your savory little volume with 
interest^ amusement, and satisfaction. So far 
as concerns myself I cannot but feel flattered 
by your respectful quotation of my aphorisms, 
and by your very appreciative and useful com- 
fnents upon them. You knozv that these apho- 
risms are the result of the experience of the 
many years which I have passed in the ardent 
study of delicate feast hig — that art which, as 
Victor Hugo says in his Titanic way, consists 

" de faire aboutir. 
La mamelle du monde a la bouche d'un homme." 

You dwell ivith laudable persistency upon 
the necessity of criticism iri gastronomic mat- 
ters^ and the usefulness of your book will con- 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

sist largely in awakening a spirit of criticism 
and in calling attention to the roles of intellect 
and sentiment in the art of cooking. There is 
no severer and more conclusive test of a coun- 
try's state of civilization than the way its in- 
habitants dine. 

How often we hear cultivated European 
travellers say that America is a country where 
there is the greatest variety of primary ali- 
me^itary substances of the finest quality, but, 
unfortunately, the cooking and serving of them, 
leaves much to be desired. Certainly there is 
no lack of cook-books. Indeed, this special 
branch of literature is more flourishing in the 
United States and in Great Britain than it is 
in the country where good cookery is not yet 
entirely a souvenir of the past. These books, 
however, are often merely compilations of reci- 
pes, and few of them are based on careful 
observation or on truly scientific and artistic 
principles. The writers of these works, too, 
are often led away by the mere love of novelty, 
as if the caprices of fashion were to be allowed 
to perturb the immutable theories of scientific 
dining! Moreover, the neglect or ignorance 
of the kitchen and table is partly the fault of 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

some of the ideas that were brought over to us 
in the '^Mayflower.'' 

My more recent visits to my native land 
have, I fnust confess with joy, caused me to 
recognize the pleasing fact that the culinary 
art has vtade great progress in Am,erica dur- 
ing the past twenty years. It is now possible 
^generally with the aid of French cooks, it is 
true) to obtain at one or two restaurants in 
each of the principal cities, and in many of 
the clubs, a dinner fairly well prepared and 
passably served. In private houses, it seems 
to m,e, the advance beyond the old state of 
things is not so perceptible. Generally speak- 
ing, there is always a great abundance of food, 
but it is not well cooked or attractively pre- 
sented on the table ; and it is only in certain 
families, whose members have travelled, and 
whose tastes and opportunities have led them 
specially to observe the arrangement of a din- 
ner in a first-class French restaurant or 
private house, that we yet find the matchless 
cookery and perfection in all the details of 
table-service without which a dinner is a fail- 
ure. Much, therefore, remains to be done, and 
I am sure that your dainty volume — which is 



X INTRODUCTION. 

a sort of higher hand-book of the kitchen and 
dining-room^ if I may so express myself {and 
I think I may) — will greatly help to increase 
in America a knowledge of the true principles 
of delicate feasting. 

If after reading your pages ^ so full of ideas 
— so suggestive y as the French moderriists 
would say — my countrymen do not become con- 
vinced, tuith that charming poet and gastron- 
omist, Theodore de B anvil le, that the hygiene 
of the stomach is also the hygiene of the mind 
and soul, and that delicate cookery develops 
the intelligcfice and the moral seiisibility, the 
fault will not be yours. I approve you heart- 
ily and wholly, even in your paradoxes, which 
ahvays contaift a kernel of logical observation 
and judicious criticism. 

Adieu, my dear author ; macte virtute, by 
which I mean, continue in your efforts to wiit a 
glorious pair of gouty crutches, and believe me 
always your devoted and inseparable compan- 
ion in gastronomy, 

P. Z. DiDSBURY. 



CONTENTS. 



PAQK 

Introduction vii 

I. The Gastronomic Art i 

II. The Chemistry of Cooking ... 14 

III. Methods of Preparing Meats . . 18 

IV. Conditions Requisite for Healthy 

Digestion 28 

V. On Vegetables 35 

VI. On Relish and Seasoning .... 52 
VII. Acetaria, or Concerning the Dress- 
ing OF Salads 65 

VIII. The Theory of Soups 83 

IX. Practical Soup-making 91 

X. About Sauces 97 

XI. Menus, Hors d'CEuvres, Entrees . 112 
XII. On Paratriptics and the Making 

OF Tea and Coffee 120 

XIII. The Dining-room and its Decora- 

tion 132 

XIV. On Dining-tables 140 



xii CONTENTS. 



rAOB 



XV. On Table-service 157 

XVI. On Serving Wines 172 

XVII. The Art of Eating at Table. . 180 
XVIII. On Being Invited to Dine ... 196 

Index 209 



^ LIBRARY 
JUL 14 1890 

vJPlOFMINTffiiOB.j 



DELICATE FEASTING. 



I. 

THE GASTRONOMIC ART 

Here are some points which ought always 
to be borne in mind, both by those who cook 
and by those who eat. I quote them in the 
form of aphorisms, proverbs, epigrams, or 
dicta, accompanying each with the name of 
the author. 

I. A man can dine only once a day. — P. Z. 
Didsbury. 

This profound sentence should be written 
in flame-colored letters on the walls of every 
kitchen, so that the cook may never forget 
the terrible responsibility of his functions. 
If the dinner is defective the misfortune is 
irreparable ; when the long-expected dinner- 
hour arrives, one eats but does not dine ; 
the dinner-hour passes, and the diner is sad, 
I 



2 DELICATE FEASTING. 

for, as the philosopher has said, a man can 
dine only once a day. 

II. Bad cooking diminishes happiness and 

shortens life. — Wisdom of ages. 

III. The art of cooking, like the art of dining, 
is exempt from the caprices of fashion. 
The principles of both these arts are 
eternal and immutable. — P. Z. Didsbury. 

In this pithy dictum the author prophet- 
ically and implicitly condemned such barbar- 
ous inventions as ''progressive dinner-par- 
ties." 

IV. The pleasures of the table may be en- 
joyed every day, in every climate, at all 
ages, and by all conditions of men. — 
Brillat-Savarin. 

The author of the " Physiology of Taste " 
was a vigorous rather than a delicate eater, 
and a speculative rather than a practical gas- 
tronomer. We will not accept all he says 
as being gospel, but will listen gratefully to 
such liberal and broadly human maxims as 
the above. The arts of cooking and of din- 
ing interest all sorts and conditions of men ; 
they are not merely the privilege of the rich ; 
they are philanthropic and democratic arts. 



THE GASTRONOMIC ART. 3 

V. Those who get indigestion, or who be- 

come intoxicated, know neither how to 
eat nor how to drink. — Brillat-Savarin. 

The same author has said, " Animals feed ; 
man eats ; the intelligent man alone knows 
how to eat/' Strange to say, the stomach is 
the basis of our whole existence ; it is the 
source of strength and of weakness, of health 
and of disease, of gayety and of melancholy ; 
we do everything for, by, or through the 
stomach ; and yet the two series of opera- 
tions which most closely concern the stom- 
ach — I mean the operations of cooking and 
eating food — are those to which most people 
devote the least reasoning. 

VI. A well-cooked and a well-served dinner 
implies, on the part of the host, a sense 
of the respect he owes to his guests, 
whose happiness he controls while they 
are under his roof. On the part of the 
cook, it implies, not only a thorough 
knowledge of his art, but also a sense 
of dignity and self-respect and a certain 
emotion. Good cooking comes from the 
heart as well as from the brain, and, 
therefore, it is not a science, but an art. 
The cook who is a real artist, and whose 



4 DELICATE FEASTING. 

dishes are works of art, will experience 
over his saucepans emotion as poignant 
as that which Benvenuto Cellini felt when 
he was casting one of his immortal bronze 
statues. — P. Z. Didsbury. 

VII. If there is anything sadder than unrec- 
ognized genius, it is the misunderstood 
stomach. The heart whose love is re- 
jected — this much-abused drama — rests 
upon a fictitious want. But the stom- 
ach ! Nothing can be compared to its 
sufferings, for we must have life before 
everything. — Honore de Balzac. 

VIII. The gastronomer loves order and har- 
mony of service, as the painter loves har- 
mony of colors. Excellent food served 
in a coarse dish will seem less succulent 
than poorer food served on fine porcelain 
or gold-plate. Nevertheless the charm 
of glass-ware, lordly dishes, and delicate 
napery must not be exaggerated. No 
splendor of service can compensate for 
inferior and badly cooked viands. — P. Z. 
Didsbury. 

IX. A good restaurant is like a more or less 
epic poem — it cannot be improvised in a 



THE GASTRONOMIC ART. 5 

day. Tradition, knowledge, experience, 
and even genius, are necessary. A good 
cellar alone can only be formed with the 
aid of length of time and prodigious fac- 
ulties of taste. — Magny. 

The author of this aphorism is the famous 
cook who founded the Restaurant Magny in 
the Rue Contrescarpe at Paris, and made a 
fortune by selling good food and real wine. 
George Sand, the great novelist, was one of 
Magny 's most faithful admirers; and as, in 
her quality of poet, she had the privilege of 
omniscience, she knew, as I have been told 
by the sweet poet Theodore de Banville, 
that wines and food are the best, and per- 
haps the only, medicines. And so, during a 
long and cruel malady, which nearly carried 
off her son, she insisted that Maurice Sand 
should drink only wines chosen by Magny, 
and eat only food prepared by Magny's own 
hands. The excellent restaurateur yielded 
to the mother's desire, and made for Maurice 
those consommes, or quintessences of nutri- 
ment, which are infinitely rarer than a good 
poem or a faultless sonnet. Thus Magny, 
impeccable doctor and perfect cook, saved 
George Sand the terrible grief of losing her 



6 DELICATE FEASTING. 

son, and preserved for our pleasure an in- 
genious writer, the author of " Masques et 
Bouffons." 

X. In a restaurant when a waiter offers you 
turbot, ask for salmon, and when he 
offers you a sole, order a mackerel ; as 
language to man, so fish has been given 
to the waiter to disguise his thoughts. — 
P. Z. Didsbury. 

The philosopher, I imagine, wrote this 
maxim after a varied and disastrous expe- 
rience in European restaurants. The deca- 
dence of the restaurants in the Old World 
largely justifies the severity of the above 
warning. There are, however, exceptions, and 
in certain first-class restaurants in Paris — six, 
at the outside — -it is well not to be too ready 
to choose for yourself, without listening to 
the voice of- the head-waiter. As a rule, in a 
restaurant, maintain your free will, but do 
not try to impose it. In matters of cookery, 
as in love, much confidence is needed. 

On the other hand, if you become 2. habitue 
of a first-class Paris restaurant, it is preferable 
not to be on speaking terms with the mattre 
d'hotely but to transmit your orders directly 
through the intelligent waiter, whom your 



THE GASTRONOMIC ART. 7 

experienced eye will have detected the very 
first day that you set foot in the establish- 
ment. The ^naitre d' hotel- — important, fat, 
fussy, and often disdainful in his manner — 
serves mainly to create confusion ; he receives 
your orders with deference, but rarely trans- 
mits them to the waiter with exactitude ; 
and, as it is the waiter who communicates 
immediately with the cook, it is preferable 
to suppress, as far as possible, the useless in- 
tervention of the mattre d'hotel. For my 
own part, in the restaurants where I am in 
the habit of dining, I refuse to hold any 
communication with the maitres dVioU/ until, 
perhaps, at the end of the dinner, when I 
graciously allow a favored one to descend 
into the cellar in person and select for me, 
with his own podgy fingers, a creamy camem- 
bert cheese, the ripest and the richest of the 
lot. This concession I make, not because I 
admit for a moment that the niaitre d' hotel 
is an infallible judge of camembert, but mere- 
ly because, after dinner, I am more charita- 
bly disposed than before dinner, and, conse- 
quently, I desire to show to the 7naitre d'hStel 
that I cherish no ill-feeling against him in my 
heart of hearts, although I maintain that his 
functions, as they are generally fulfilled, have 
no raison d'etre. 



8 DELICATE FEASTING. 

XI. Cooking is generally bad because people 
fall into routine ; habit dulls their appre- 
ciation, and they do not think about what 
they are eating. 

They fall into routine because they do not 
criticise. 

They do not criticise because they have no 
ideal. 

They have no ideal because they do not 
know, theoretically and practically, 
what cooking means, what is its object, 
and what are the conditions necessary 
for success. 

The ideal is unattainable, but the aim of 
the cook should always be to reduce the 
interval which separates practical from 
ideal excellence. — P. Z. Didsbury. 

XII. There is no perfect cook-book.- — Ex- 
perientia. 

XIII. The art of cooking cannot be learned 
out of a book any more than the art of 
swimming or the art of painting. The 
best teacher is practice ; the best guide 
is sentiment. — Louis XV., King of 
France. 

Louis XV. was an amateur cook, and 
amused himself, in company with the Prince 



THE GASTRONOMIC ART. 9 

de Dombes, by making quintessential stews 
in silver pans. — See Goncourt, " La Duchesse 
de Chateauroux." 

XIV. There are innumerable books of reci- 
pes for cooking, but unless the cook is 
master of the principles of his art, and 
unless he knows the why and the where- 
fore of its processes, he cannot choose a 
recipe intelligently and execute it suc- 
cessfully. — Richard Estcourt, Providore 
of y" original *' Beefsteak Club." 

XV. The distinction of classical cookery and 
household cookery is a vain one. There 
are but too sorts of cookery, namely, 
bad cookery and good cookery. — P. Z. 
Didsbury. 

XVI. The most artistic and the most whole- 
some ways of preparing food are the 
simplest. — P. Z. Didsbury. 

XVII. The perfect cook is single-minded and 
disguises nothing. — Gamaliel Stubbs, 
Clerk of the Kitchen to Oliver Cromwell. 

XVIII. Even in Mr. D'Urfey's presence this 
I would be bound to say, that a good 
dinner is brother to a good poem ; only 



lO DELICATE FEASTING. 

it is something more substantial, and 
between two and three o'clock more 
agreeable. — Dr. William King. 

Dr. King, the English bard, born in 1663, 
died 1712, wrote a poem on the "Art of 
Cookery," in imitation of Horace's " Art of 
Poetry," having remarked that, 

" Tho* cooks are often men of pregnant wit, 
Thro' niceness of their subject few have writ." 

In the days of the learned and ingenious 
doctor, who, by the way, sided with Dr. Sache- 
verell, and had a hand in some of the po- 
litical kites which flew about at that time, 
people rose earlier and dined earlier than 
they do nowadays. But whatever the hour 
at which a good dinner is eaten, it is, as the 
worthy doctor says, brother to a good poem ; 
nay, more than that, it is a poem itself. 

XIX. It is convenient to dine late, because 
you can then concentrate all your 
thoughts on your plate, think only of 
what you are eating, and go to bed af- 
terwards. — Grimod de la Reyniere. 

The author of this sage maxim, Balthazar 
Grimod de la Reyniere, born in 1758, was 
one of the fathers of the modern art of cook- 



THE GASTRONOMIC ART. II 

ery, and a most enlightened and philosophical 
gourmand, having thoroughly orthodox ideas 
on the subject of dining. The reason he 
gives above for dining late is the true one. 
Dinner is a matter of such importance that 
it cannot be treated lightly ; it is at once a 
source of health and a source of joy, and it 
is impossible to take joy hurriedly, or to dine 
hastily. A real gourmand would sooner fast 
than be obliged to eat a good dinner in a 
hurry. The mortal enemy of dinner is every 
meal taken before it in the course of the 
working day. Eat lightly during the day, 
and reserve your forces for the crowning meal 
of dinner. Remember, also, that a dinner 
without ceremony is as much to be dreaded 
as an amateur concert. 

XX. The man who pays no attention to the 
food that he consumes is comparable 
only to the pig, in whose trough the 
trotters of his own son, a pair of old 
braces, a newspaper, and a set of domi- 
noes are equally welcome. — Charles Mon- 
selet. 

By this selection of maxims and summings 
up of experience, I have sought to impress 
upon the reader's mind the high importance 



12 DELICATE FEASTING. 

of the arts of cooking and of eating, and of 
all the operations connected with them. I 
have been careful to choose only general 
maxims, from which the thoughtful reader 
will deduce for himself particular conse- 
quences. Until recently, the cook-book has 
been too often merely a collection of recipes 
printed pell-mell in bewildering abundance, 
and classified in the least methodical man- 
ner. Of such cook-books there are hundreds, 
and many of them are admirable in their 
way, but a cook must be already very learned 
in his art in order to know how to use them 
with advantage, and to adapt each recipe to 
a case in point. The consequence is, that 
many cook-books are bought, and few are 
read either by mistress or maids, by masters 
or by head-cooks. The philosopher P. Z. 
Didsbury has told us that, nowadays, people 
fall into routine in matters of cookery, be- 
cause they do not criticise ; but how can they 
criticise if they do not know the principles 
of the art of cooking? It is not a question 
of having at one's finger's ends the compo- 
sition of a hundred dishes, or the recipes for 
making ninety-nine soups. The knowledge 
indispensable to critic and practitioner alike 
is the why and the wherefore of each opera- 



V 



THE GASTRONOMIC ART. 1 3 

tion employed in the art of cooking ; the con- 
ditions of success in each operation ; the 
means of preserving, developing, and com- 
bining flavors. Now these operations may 
all be reduced to a few main processes, the 
thorough comprehension of which is the first 
step in the art of cooking. All the subtle- 
ties and delicacies of the art depend on the 
perfection of these main and elementary proc- 
esses ; and, to go even further, we may say 
that no one who is not master of these proc- 
esses can use with advantage a book of rec- 
ipes. Furthermore, both the cook and the 
critic will increase the lucidity of their rea- 
soning, and the completeness of their com- 
prehension of things, by acquiring a few 
elementary notions about the chemistry of 
cooking. Let me insist once more upon the 
necessity of the application of logic and rea- 
son to these questions of gastronomy ; upon 
the importance of knowing the *'why'* and 
the " wherefore," if not the " how ;" and, 
above all, upon the desirableness of culti- 
vating the critical faculty as applied to the 
arts of cooking, of dining, and of serving 
food. The destiny of nations, it has been 
said, depends upon the manner in which 
they eat. 



II. 

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKING. 

Animal chemistry is in a very backward 
condition, as compared with vegetable and 
mineral chemistry. Prof. Bloxam, for in- 
stance, tells us that the chemical formulae of 
a great many animal substances are perfectly 
unintelligible, conveying not the least infor- 
mation as to the position in which the com- 
pound stands with respect to other sub- 
stances, or the changes which it might un- 
dergo under given circumstances. Certain re- 
sults, however, have been obtained, and will 
be here cited so far as they have significance 
in the operations of cooking, no pretension 
being made to originality, and the authori- 
ties being cited in each case. 

For the general guidance of the cook, meat 
may be said to be composed of four elements, 
namely: muscular fibre, albumen, fat, and 
juice — the latter being, chemically speaking, 
a very complicated substance containing a 
number of proximate elements. 



THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKING. 1 5 

" In the juice of flesh," says Prof. Bloxam 
(" Chemistry Inorganic and Organic," Lon- 
don, 1883), "which may be squeezed out of 
chopped flesh, there are certain substances 
which appear to play a very important part 
in nutrition. The Hquid is distinctly acid, 
which is remarkable when the alkaline char- 
acter of the blood is considered, and contains 
phosphoric, lactic, and butyric acid, together 
with kreatine, inosite, and saline matters." 

These names will convey little to simple 
minds, but the essential point to be remem- 
bered is that the juice of flesh contains a va- 
riety of nutritive substances. 

Flint, in his " Physiology of Man " (N. Y., 
1875), says: " Food contains many substances 
having an important influence on nutrition 
which have never been isolated and analyzed, 
but which render it agreeable, and give to the 
diet that variety which the system impera- 
tively demands. 

" Many of these principles are developed in 
the process of cooking r 

The same authority tells us that the effect 
of cooking on muscular tissue is to disinte- 
grate, to a certain extent, the intermuscular 
alveolar or connective tissue, and so to facili- 
tate the action of the digestive fluids. 



1 6 DELICATE FEASTING. 

" The savors developed in this process have 
a decidedly favorable influence on the secretion 
of the gastric juice'' 

To present the same fact in another Hght : 
"All methods of preparation," says Payen 
(" Substances Alimentaires "), '* which tend to 
render meat easier to divide or more tender, 
and often more agreeable to the taste, concur 
to increase its digestibility, or, in other words, 
its easy assimilation, and often ajinihilate cer- 
tain causes of unJiealthiness existing in raw 
meaty 

Fat and fatty substances are not digested 
in the stomach, inasmuch as the gastric juice 
has no action on them, further than setting 
them free from the albuminoid substances 
with which they may be entangled. This 
variety of food, together with the starch, is 
digested below the stomach, through the ac- 
tion of the pancreatic and intestinal juices. 
This explains why the saturation of food in 
general by fat during the process of cooking 
should be avoided, as the fat in this case acts 
as a varnish to the albuminous substances 
and prevents free access to the latter of the 
gastric juices, by which alone this class of 
food can be digested. 

Albumen is a substance which becomes 



THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKING. 1/ 

more indigestible the longer it is cooked ; it 
is most easily digested in the raw state. The 
most familiar form of albumen is white of 
egg, which contains of albumen about 12 per 
per cent., of water about 86 per cent., and 
about 2 per cent, of soluble salts. 
2 



III. 

METHODS OF PREPARING MEATS. 

The usual methods of cooking are roast- 
ing, broiling, boiling, frying, stewing, and 
decocting. We will consider each process 
briefly, from the point of view of practical 
chemistry. 

In roasting, the exterior of the piece of 
meat is submitted brusquely to a tempera- 
ture considerably above 212 degrees Fahren- 
heit or boiling-point, or at any rate not be- 
low boiling-point. TJie result is that the al- 
bumen of the surface is coagulated^ and in this 
state acts as a barrier against the escape of 
the juice inside, and against the infiltration of 
liquid from without. After a few minutes 
close exposure to a brisk, clear fire, the joint 
may be drawn back a little and roasted slow- 
ly. Thus the interior mass of the meat, en- 
closed in an impervious jacket, cooks literal- 
ly in its juice, getting heated in the inside 
only to a temperature between 120 and 150 



METHODS OF PREPARING MEATS. 1 9 

degrees Fahrenheit, which is not sufficient to 
coagulate and harden the interior albumen. 
By this outer dried layer the meat inside is 
protected from evaporation and desiccation, 
and, being acted on by the liquid juice, it un- 
dergoes a maceration and a temperature suf- 
ficient to disintegrate the muscular fibre, to 
gelatinize and render soluble the connective 
tissue that binds the fibres together, and to 
develop the aroma enough to make the meat 
agreeable to the taste. What the aroma is 
remains a mystery. All we know is that it 
comes from the brown sapid substance pro- 
duced on the outer layer of the flesh by the 
operation of roasting. In this part of the 
meat, according to Bloxam, '* some of the 
constituents of the juice suffer a change 
which gives rise to the peculiar flavor of roast 
meat." 

Broiling requires a brisk fire, free from 
smoke, the combustible being either charcoal 
or coke. The fire should extend somewhat 
beyond the edges of the gridiron, in order 
that the sides of the meat may be acted 
upon by the heat at the same time as that 
portion which is in more immediate contact 
with the fire. 

The albumen over the entire surface of the 



20 DELICATE FEASTING. 

piece of meat, whether cutlets, chops, steak, 
kidneys, or what not, should be rapidly co- 
agulated, so as to prevent the escape of the 
juice. 

Always take care to have your fire brisk 
and clear at the beginning of the operation, 
so that you may be sure of rapidly setting 
the whole surface of your meat — glazing it, so 
to speak — for the coagulation of the surface 
albumen forms an impervious jacket for the 
grilled meat, just as it does for the roast and 
the boiled meat, as already described. 

Let your gridiron be hot before you put 
your meat on it, otherwise the cold bars, 
conducting away the heat and preventing 
rapid coagulation of the surface albumen, 
will cause an escape of juice into the fire. 

In order to prevent sticking, the gridiron, 
before the meat is put on it, should be rubbed 
over with suet. For grilling fish the grid- 
iron may be rubbed with chalk. 

The gridiron is made to incline gently tow- 
ards the cook, who, being intelligent, and 
having comprehended all that we have said 
about the necessity of carefully imprisoning 
the juice of meat and never piercing the out- 
side coating of coagulated albumen, will, of 
course, never dream of turning his chops or 



METHODS OF PREPARING MEATS. 21 

steaks with a fork — he will grasp them with 
a pair of special tongs, or even with his fin- 
gers. In practical kitchen-work one is con- 
stantly reminded of the truth of the familiar 
saying that fingers were made before forks, 
and also before tongs. 

The operations of stewing invariably begin 
by browning the meat in a little butter or 
dripping in a saucepan or a frying-pan. The 
object is precisely the same as in the opera- 
tions of roasting, boiling, and broiling: name- 
ly, to coagulate the surface albumen of the 
meat, and so case-harden it and develop its 
flavor in accordance with the chemical prin- 
ciples already set forth. 

Frying is the process of subjecting food to 
a high temperature in a bath of hot fat, 
which, at the moment of beginning the op- 
eration, should be about 400 degrees Fah- 
renheit. During the operation the temper- 
ature of the bath should rise two or three 
degrees. 

The best frying-bath is one composed of 
beef suet and veal fat in equal proportions, 
melted down ; the grease of the dripping-pan 
and of the pot-au-feu is also good ; lard, too, 
may be used, although it leaves the surface 
of the fried food less pure ; a special oil is 



22 DELICATE FEASTING. 

also sold for frying purposes, and butter may- 
be employed for light frying only. Ordinary 
olive oil, when heated to a high temperature, 
contracts a strong taste, probably due to 
the charring of particles of the flesh of the 
olive that remain imperceptibly mixed with 
the oil. 

Note that cook-books generally recom- 
mend the use of a beaten egg to make the 
flour, bread-crumbs, or chapelure adhere to a 
sole, for instance, which is to be fried. A 
simpler method is to dip the sole in milk 
and then roll it in your flour. Thus you 
avoid the thick lumps and patches of crust 
which are almost inevitable when an egg is 
used. This is a small detail, but small de- 
tails all '' make for " perfection, as Matthew 
Arnold would have said. 

Experience will teach the cook to discover 
when the frying -bath has reached the re- 
quired temperature by the peculiar hissing 
sound produced by allowing a drop of water 
to fall into it. 

Decoction is the name that may be given 
to the process of extracting the juice from 
meat and separating it from the fibre and 
tissues ; it is the reverse of roasting or broil- 
ing and their derivative processes. In order 



METHODS OF PREPARING MEATS. 23 

to extract the juice of meat we place the 
flesh in cold water, the temperature of which 
is very slowly raised to the boiling-point : thus 
all the juice of the flesh is dissolved out and 
completely separated from the muscular fibre. 

Bloxam says : " The object to be attained 
in the preparation of beef-tea is the extrac- 
tion of the whole of the soluble matters from 
the flesh, to effect which the meat should be 
minced as finely as possible, soaked for a 
short time in an equal weight of cold water, 
and slowly raised to the boiling-point, at 
which it is maintained for a few minutes. The 
liquid strained from the residual fibrine con- 
tains all the constituents of the juice except 
the albumen, which has been coagulated." 

The economical French, in making their 
pot-aii-feu and bouillon^ do not mince the 
meat, but leave it in a solid mass, the only 
reason being that thus the meat may be pre- 
sented at table, although there is very little 
nourishment left in it after the process of 
decoction is over. 

In boiling, the meat is exposed to a high 
temperature in water. You wait until the 
water has reached the boiling-point before 
you immerse the meat in it, and leave it to 
cook for about five minutes at that tempera- 



24 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ture. The heat of the water, 212 degrees 
Fahrenheit, at once coagulates the albumen 
in the external layer of flesh, which becomes 
thus a waterproof case in which the meat 
cooks, safe from the infiltration of water and 
from the escape of its juice. After the first 
five minutes the cooking should proceed 
more gently, at a temperature of 162 degrees 
Fahrenheit. 

Both in roasting and in boiling, the result 
is similar, and is thus noted by Dalton on the 
preparation of meat for food : 

" Firstly, the albumen which is present in 
the muscular tissue is coagulated, and the mus- 
cular fibres, therefore, become rather firmer and 
more consistent than they are in fresh meat. 

" Secondly, the cellular tissue between the 
muscular fibres is softened and gelatinized, 
so that the fibres are more easily separated 
from one another, and the whole mass becomes 
more tender and easily digestible. 

" Thirdly, the high temperature develops 
in the albuminous ingredients of the meat a 
peculiar and attractive flavor, which they did 
not possess before^ and which excites in a 
healthy mariner the digestive secretion, thus 
serving not only to please the taste, bnt also to 
assist in the digestion of the food. 



METHODS OF PREPARING MEATS. 2$ 

" Raw meat," adds Dalton, " is usually in- 
sipid and unattractive. It is only after it has 
been subjected to a certain amount of cook- 
ing that the desired flavor makes its appear- 
ance, by which the appetite is stimulated, 
and the nutritive qualities of the food conse- 
quently improved. 

" The preparation of meat in cooking 
should be carefully managed so as to accom- 
plish the results above described. For if the 
heat be insufficient the proper flavor will not 
be developed ; and if the heat be excessive, 
the meat, instead of being cooked, will be 
burned and decomposed, and thus rendered 
useless for the purpose of nutrition." 

Notice how constantly science recurs to 
tke physiological advantages of delicate cook- 
ings in that it stimulates the appetite^ pleases 
the taste y assists in the digestion, and actually 
improves the nutritious qualities of food. 

Before cooking meat, a sufficient time must 
have elapsed since the slaughtering to have 
allowed the cadaveric rigidity to pass and the 
spontaneous reaction to set in which deter- 
mines a primary disintegration of the tissues. 
The time which meat has to be kept varies 
according to the temperature. If cooked 
while in a state of cadaveric rigidity, that is 



26 DELICATE FEASTING. 

to say, too fresh, meat is hard and indiges- 
tible. 

The first practical lesson to be drawn from 
the above theory of roasting is that a joint 
should never be spitted by thrusting an iron 
rod through it. The only reasonable and sci- 
entific spit is a sort of cage which clasps the 
meat around without piercing it anywhere. 
Thus there will be no loss of juice. 

The rational way of placing the spit is in a 
horizontal position, and care should be taken 
to have the fire in a somewhat convex form, so 
that the heat may be distributed over the ends 
as well as over the middle portions of the meat. 

Baked meat is an abomination. 

So-called " roast " meat, cooked in ovens, 
is a delusion and a snare. 

Roast meat is roast meat, and in order to 
roast you must have an open fire, before 
which your joint is placed in such a manner 
that the air circulates freely around it. 

The reason why it is objectionable to cook 
meat by baking it in an oven — unless it be a 
big bakers' oven — is that it is difficult, if not 
impossible, to keep an ordinary oven, in a 
cooking -stove, clean and well -ventilated. 
The sides, roof, and floor of the oven get be- 
spattered with particles of fat and spots of 



METHODS OF PREPARING MEATS. 2/ 

gravy during the baking process, and these 
particles become charred, and thus fill the 
oven with ammoniac and with a foul atmos- 
phere of empyreumatic oils, by which terri- 
ble word the chemists indicate the unwhole- 
some vapors generated through the action of 
fire. 

In the process of roasting before an open 
fire these empyreumatic odors are, indeed, 
generated, but they pass off up the chimney, 
whereas in the oven they are imprisoned, 
and there penetrate the meat, destroy its fla- 
vor, and render it more or less insipid. 

Meat, however, may be baked in pies, be- 
cause in this case its surface, being protected 
by the crust, cannot be charred and impreg- 
nated with the foul empyreumatic oils. The 
baking of meat in a pie -crust amounts, in 
reality, to a stewing operation, the paste 
forming, as it were, a stew-pan with its lid. 

Frequent basting is essential to successful 
roasting. Otherwise, the coagulated surface 
of the meat would crack and split open dur- 
ing the operation, and allow an escape of the 
juice. The melted fat, poured over the meat^ 
penetrates iiito every crevice, and by means of 
the higher temperature of the fat the surface of 
the meat is maintained in an impervious state. 



IV. 

CONDITIONS REQUISITE FOR 
HEALTHY DIGESTION 

" The healthy action of the digestive proc- 
ess must be provided for by careful attention 
to various particulars. First of all, the food 
should be of good quality ^.nd properly cooked. 
The best methods of preparation by cook- 
ing are the simplest ; such as roasting, broil- 
ing, or boiling. Articles of food which are 
fried are very apt to be indigestible and hurt- 
ful, because the fat used in this method of 
cooking is infiltrated by the heat, and made 
to penetrate through the whole mass of the 
food. Now we have seen that fatty sub- 
stances are not digested in the stomach, as 
the gastric juice has no action upon them. In 
their natural condition they are simply mixed 
loosely with the albuminous matters, as but- 
ter, when taken with bread or vegetables, or 
the adipose tissue which is mingled with the 
muscular flesh of meat ; and the solution of 



CONDITIONS OF HEALTHY DIGESTION. 29 

the albuminous matters in the stomach, there- 
fore, easily sets them free, to pass into the 
small intestines. But when imbibed, and 
thoroughly infiltrated through the alimen- 
tary substances, they present an obstacle to 
the access of the watery gastric juice, and 
not only remain undigested themselves, but 
also interfere with the digestion of the al- 
buminous matters. It is for this reason 
that all kinds of food in which butter or 
other oleaginous matters are used as ingre- 
dients, so as to be absorbed into their sub- 
stance in cooking, are more indigestible 
than if prepared in a simple manner." — 
Dalton ('* Treatise on Physiology," N. Y., 

1878). 

None of the immediate principles, taken 
separately, in the animal or vegetable king- 
dom, suffices for complete nutrition, even 
during a short time, and even with the addi- 
tion of water to drink. 

Payen (''Substances Alimentaires ") con- 
siders that we can realize the most favorable 
chances of preserving for a long time health 
and strength, especially by maintaining a 
fair balance in the consumption of nutritive 
substances of an animal and of a vegetable 
nature, by varying our alimentary regime ^ and 



30 DELICATE FEASTING. 

by avoiding both insufficiency and excess of 
nourishment. 

The flesh of the ox, according to all the 
authorities on alimentation, of all the kinds 
of muscular tissue, is that which possesses 
the greatest nutritive power, which repre- 
sents the most renovating plastic aliment, 
which furnishes the most tasty and appetiz- 
ing broth, and which can be used more con- 
stantly with profit than any other article of 
food of its class. 

Incidentally let it be noted that salted 
meat is much less nutritious than fresh. It 
has been ascertained chemically that brine 
extracts from the muscular tissue much of 
its nutritive principle. 

Dalton places next after beef, as being most 
valuable as nutriment, mutton and venison ; 
then the flesh of fowls, the various kinds of 
game-birds, and, lastly, fish. 

The opinion of modern French scientists, 
as presented in the article on Food in the 
" Nouveau Dictionnaire de Medicine," may 
be noted and read with interest. According 
to this authority, *' Fish is only slightly nu- 
tritive, but easily digestible. Its exclusive 
use would soon produce a diminution of 
muscular force, paleness of the tissues, and 



CONDITIONS OF HEALTHY DIGESTION. 3 1 

all the signs of an alimentation insufficient 
in quality. 

" Fish is more digestible than the white 
meat of fowl. 

" The flesh of shell-fish crustaceans is hard 
of digestion. 

" Roast meat is more digestible than 
boiled. 

" Eggs very slightly cooked and daiiy prod- 
uce are more digestible than white meats. 

" Of vegetables, the feculents are the most 
digestible. 

" New wheat bread is heavier than stale 
bread. 

" The aliments to which the cook's art 
gives a liquid or semi-liquid form are, in gen- 
eral, more digestible. 

" The more readily an aliment is dissolved 
by the juices of the stomach the easier its 
digestion." 

Add to these facts the remark of Dalton : 
*' Cheese contains the nutritious elements of 
the milk in a condensed, but somewhat indi- 
gestible, form." 

Nevertheless you will eat a little cheese 
after your dinner, for, as Brillat-Savarin hath 
it, " A dessert without cheese is like a beau- 
tiful woman with only one eye." 



32 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Of the vegetable tribe, lentils, beans, and 
peas are the most nourishing. 

Fruit, when perfectly ripe, is most easy of 
digestion, because the juice of fruit consists 
of pure grape-sugar (glucose) and water, and 
it is in the form of grape-sugar that all starchy 
food is finally absorbed into the system. It 
may be said that the starch of the fruit, hav- 
ing been already changed into glucose by the 
process of ripening, requires no digestion after 
it is eaten by man, inasmuch as it is already 
in the state in which this element of nutri- 
tion is immediately absorbed into the system. 

Special qualities of meats from the point of 
view of their digestibility. 

According to Payen, without there being 
anything absolute in these qualities, which 
depend on the particular state of the diges- 
tive organs of different individuals or on their 
idiosyncrasies, we may say, in general, that 
meats are more easily digestible the less 
strong their cohesion and the less their 
hardness. We might thus establish between 
them the following order, beginning with the 
lightest : 

Sea and river fish, fowl, game, crustaceans, 
lamb, veal, beef, mutton, wild boar, pork. 



CONDITIONS OF HEALTHY DIGESTION. 33 

In these categories are generally consid- 
ered heavy and hard to digest : salmon, eels, 
geese, ducks, and some other water-birds, as 
well as strongly smoked and salted meat. 

Oji the time required for the digestion of dif- 
ferent kinds of food. 

Hrs. Min. 

Roasted pork 5 15 

Salt beef, boiled 4 15 

Veal, broiled 4 

Boiled hens 4 

Roasted mutton 3 15 

" beef 3 

Boiled " 3 30 

Raw oysters 2 45 

Roasted turkey 2 30 

Boiled milk 2 

" codfish 2 

Venison steak i 35 

Trout, broiled i 30 

Tripe i 

Pigs' feet I 

Eggs, hard boiled ■! ^ ^° ^ 

\ 5 30 
" soft " 3 

The above is taken from Beaumont's " Ex- 
periments on Digestion." Dalton comments 
on these observations as follows : " These re- 
sults would not always be precisely the same 
3 



34 DELICATE FEASTING. 

for different persons, since there are varia- 
tions in this respect according to age and 
temperament. Thus, in most instances, mut- 
ton would probably be equally digestible 
with beef, or perhaps more so ; and milk, 
which in some persons is easily digested, in 
others is disposed of with considerable diffi- 
culty. But, as a general rule, the compara- 
tive digestibility of different substances is, no 
doubt, correctly expressed by the above list." 



V. 

ON VEGETABLES. 

In order to have good dishes of cooked 
vegetables you must first obtain good vege- 
tables grown rapidly and cleanly and gath- 
ered young. Unless the market-gardener has 
studied his business, and produced his wares 
in the best possible condition, the cook will 
always be handicapped in preparing those 
wares. 

Each vegetable has its good and bad sea- 
sons, and must be employed in consequence. 
In taste and quality spring carrots, for in- 
stance, differ widely from autumn carrots. 

By the art of the gardener the seasons may 
be to a certain extent suppressed. At Paris, 
for instance, the fruits and vegetables of each 
season are anticipated to a great extent by 
forced culture, which is practised on a large 
scale in the outskirts of the capital. The 
Parisian primeurs, or first-fruits, are exquisite 
in quality and taste, and quite different from 



LIBRARY 
JUL 14 1890 

HEP'T OF THE INlEHiOfi. 



36 DELICATE FEASTING. 

the early fruits and vegetables sent to Paris 
from the south of France, Spain, Portugal, 
Algeria, and even Egypt, which supplies fresh 
tomatoes to the Paris and London markets 
in January. Lately the Belgians have taken 
to grape culture, and supply the Paris mar- 
ket with fruit from January to May ; from 
July to October the grape supply comes from 
Algeria; from September to January the 
finest grapes are produced by the growers of 
Thomery, near Fontainebleau. Thus there 
are only two months out of the twelve when 
you cannot have fresh grapes at Paris. In 
all kinds of vegetables and salads the Paris 
market is unrivalled. The methods of cult- 
ure employed by the gardeners who supply 
this market are worthy of careful study. 

As a general rule, all dry vegetables are 
cooked by putting them into cold water, the 
temperature of which is gradually raised to 
boiling-point, while all fresh and green veg- 
etables are cooked by plunging them into 
salted water already boiling. 

The reason is that, as in the cooking of 
meat, so in the cooking of vegetables, it is 
desirable to protect them against the infiltra- 
tion of water. 

Starch is as constant a constituent of veg- 



ON VEGETABLES. 37 

etables as albumen Is of meat. Raw starch 
is practically not digestible by man, so that it 
is absolutely necessary that vegetables should 
be thoroughly cooked. In boiling, the starch 
granules absorb water, swell up, and burst, 
thus undergoing the first necessary step to 
their subsequent transformation into glucose 
through the action of the digestive fluids. 
Also, when starch, in the dry state, is heated 
to 302 degrees Fahrenheit, it is changed into 
dextrine, in which state it is thoroughly di- 
gestible. The potato is composed almost en- 
tirely of starch, and the necessary transfor- 
mation in cooking is comparatively easy to 
effect. But in the case of dried beans and 
peas, prolonged cooking is necessary in order 
to soften and disintegrate the woody fibre 
with which this class of food is more or less 
entangled. The development of flavor by 
cooking is much less marked in vegetables 
than in meat. In boiling dried vegetables 
a method is adopted which is the reverse of 
that in cooking meat. The vegetables are 
immersed in cold water, which is afterwards 
brought to the boiling-point, and then the 
cooking proceeds at a temperature somewhat 
below 212 degrees Fahrenheit, so as not to 
destroy the form of .the vegetables. 



38 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Starch in the digestive tube is changed 
first into dextrine, then into glucose. 



Much has been written about the ways of 
preserving the green color in cooked vege- 
tables. 

The French cooks, I have read in English 
cook-books, generally put a pinch of carbo- 
nate of ammonia into the water. 

Dubois- Bernard and Souchay use a red 
copper pan to boil their vegetables in. The 
red copper, during the process of boiling, 
gives off a little oxychloride of copper, which 
is the same product that is used for giving 
a green patine to bronze statues. 

In reality the great secret is simply to have 
abundance of zvater in the pot. 

It will be found that string-beans, for in- 
stance, plunged into well-salted boiling water, 
in a pot of any material, provided it be large 
enough to allow the beans to float freely, each 
one careering round on its own account in the 
stream of ebullition, will retain their green 
color perfectly. 

The pot should not be covered. 

It is needless to add that the same holds 
good of other green vegetables. 

Another idea which is found in many cook- 



ON VEGETABLES. 39 

books, and which is indiscriminately practised 
by non-reasoning cooks — that is to say, by 
the majority — is a process of cooHng or chill- 
ing, termed by the French cooks rafraichir. 
This process consists in plunging the vegeta- 
bles into boiling water for a few minutes; 
then taking them out and throwing cold wa- 
ter on to them to cool them ; then, after they 
are cooled and drained, continuing the cook- 
ing in boiling water. This process is employed 
to prevent the vegetables turning yellow. 

Experience in my own kitchen, confirmed 
by the experience and practice of many in- 
telligent chefs whom I have consulted, has 
convinced me that this cooling process is a 
mistake, except when the supplementary cook- 
ing operations justify it, and also when the 
vegetables have to be served cold, as for in- 
stance hi the case of a macedoine or salad of 
vegetables. 

As a general rule green vegetables should 
be boiled in an abundance of well-salted boil- 
ing water, in a roomy pot and without a lid. 
As soon as the vegetables are cooked serve 
them rapidly. Let as short a time as possible 
elapse betzveen the cooking of vegetables and 
the eating of them. 

In cooking cauliflower, asparagus, string- 



40 DELICATE FEASTING. 

beans, and any other vegetable which may 
sometimes have a slightly bitter taste, due to 
accidents of culture or what not, it is well al- 
ways to put a lump of loaf sugar into the wa- 
ter. This precaution will effectually counter- 
act the bitterness, if there be any. 

To cook a cauliflower proceed thus : wash 
it carefully ; cut it into four if it is large ; pass 
each portion through a bowl of water with a 
dash of vinegar in it to drive the grubs out if 
there are any ; drain and plunge into a gallon 
of boiling water containing about one half an 
ounce of salt and a lump of sugar. 

Take the cauliflower out of the pot as soon 
as it begins to feel tender to the touch. 
Pinch it with your fingers to feel whether it 
is tender or not. TJie cooking of the cauli- 
flower will continue for some minutes after 
it has beejt taken out of the water, thanks to 
the heat stored in it. 

Cauliflower thus cooked may be served 
with white sauce, or an gratin. 

To make cauliflower au gratin take one 
ounce of butter and a little more than one 
ounce of flour ; hold them in a saucepan over 
the fire for two minutes; then add one and 
a half pints of water, two pinches salt, three 
pinches pepper ; put on the fire and boil for 



ON VEGETABLES. 4I 

ten minutes, stirring all the while with a 
wooden spoon. Then you add a good ounce 
of grated Parmesan cheese and a good ounce 
of grated Gruyere, and reduce the whole for 
five minutes. (By " reducing " we mean ap- 
plying very hot fire to the saucepan in order 
to bring about rapid evaporation, and so re- 
duce the liquidity of the mixture. " Cook- 
ing," on the other hand, is produced by a 
slow and continuous fire.) 

Next you take a shallow dish of porcelain 
or of crockery which will resist heat, the 
same dish in which the cauliflower will be 
served when cooked. You place a layer of 
cauliflower in the bottom of the dish, and 
spread over it a layer of the sauce. Then 
you pile up the rest of the cauliflower, pour 
over it the rest of the sauce, sprinkle another 
ounce of grated Parmesan and a spoonful of 
cracker-crumbs, and pour over the whole three 
quarters of an ounce of melted butter. Then 
you put the dish in an oven with fire above 
and fire below, and in twenty minutes it will 
be as brown and golden as a picture by Titian, 
a joy to the eye and a delight to the palate. 

N.B. — If you use salt butter reduce the 
quantity of salt in your first sauce. 

Cauliflower boiled as above may be eaten 



42 DELICATE FEASTING. 

cold with oil and vinegar as a cold vegetable, 
or employed as an ingredient in vegetable 
salads. 

Another simple way of serving it is saute 
with butter. In this case you must not boil 
the cauliflower quite so much. Take it out 
of the water while it is still quite firm ; break 
it up into small branches ; place in a saucepan 
with butter ; sprinkle on it some seasoning 
herbs or simply finely chopped chervil and 
a little pepper ; cook over a brisk fire, 
shaking the saucepan from time to time, 
and serve. 

Asparagus should be grown carefully, and 
gathered when the head is violet or tinged 
with violet. The stalks should be very white. 
You prepare it by scraping the stalks, so as 
to remove the pellicule which has been in 
contact with the soil ; wash each piece ; cut 
the stalks of equal length, say six or eight 
inches ; tie them into bundles of eight or ten 
sticks, and put them to cook in a caldron 
of boiling salt water, with a lump of sugar. 
The water should be salted at the rate of one 
quarter of an ounce of salt per quart of water 
for a quantity of asparagus varying from thirty 
to forty sticks, according to the thickness of 
the sticks. As soon as the asparagus begins 



ON VEGETABLES. 43 

to feel soft take it out of the water imme- 
diately. According to the quality of the as- 
paragus the time of cooking will vary from 
ten to twenty minutes. If you leave the as- 
paragus in the water a second after the cook- 
ing is finished it will suck in the water, become 
flabby, and be spoiled. 

For cooking asparagus conveniently and 
satisfactorily a special caldron is necessary. 
The bundle of asparagus is laid on a drainer, 
which fits into the caldron, and enables you 
to lift the cooked vegetable out of the water 
without bruising or breaking the heads. This 
caldron has a lid, and may be covered. In 
cooking asparagus there is no question of 
preserving color. 

Asparagus may be served warm — not pip- 
ing hot — or tepid, or even cold. Warm aspar- 
agus should be served with white sauce Hol- 
landaise, the sauce behig served apart in a 
sauce boat, and not poured over the whole dish. 
The asparagus, after having been well drained, 
should be served in a dish on the bottom of 
which is placed a napkin neatly folded. The 
object of serving the asparagus on a napkin is 
to insure perfect draining ; the napkin absorbs 
whatever water may still cling to the stalks. 
In some unenlightened districts asparagus is 



44 DELICATE FEASTING. 

served on a layer of toast, which fulfils the 
same object as the napkin and absorbs the 
water. If you do find asparagus served on 
toast, do not offer to eat the toast, any 
more than you would offer to eat the 
napkin. 

Silversmiths and crockery-makers have in- 
vented various kinds of drainers and special 
rustic dishes for serving asparagus, but I 
have not yet seen one that approaches per- 
fection. In table service, as in cookery, sim- 
plicity seems always more desirable than 
complexity. 

Serve the asparagus on a long dish, arrang- 
ing the bundle longitudinally on the napkin, 
just as it came out of the caldron. 

For serving asparagus, broad silver tongs 
are made. 

To eat asparagus, use your fingers. Grasp 
the stalk boldly ; dip the head in the portion 
of sauce that you have taken on your plate ; 
bite off the head and as much of the stalk 
as will yield to the pressure of the teeth. 

Warm asparagus may also be eaten with a 
simple sauce of melted butter. 

Tepid and cold asparagus requires a sauce 
of oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt, which must 
be served in a sauce boat apart. At a dinner 



ON VEGETABLES. 45 

without ceremony each one can mix this 
sauce for himself on his plate. But whether 
a small or a large quantity is mixed, the proc- 
ess is the same : you mix up the salt and 
pepper in a small quantity of vinegar ; then 
you add five or six times as much oil ; stir up 
and use, dipping each stick of asparagus into 
the sauce on your plate before conveying it 
to your mouth. 

Artichokes are cooked in the same way as 
asparagus, and served with the same sauce — 
warm, with white sauce ; cold, with oil and 
vinegar. N.B. — You must use your fingers 
to eat artichokes, and a silver knife only to 
separate the flower from the heart, ov fond. 

In spite of cooks and cook-books I feel 
convinced that neither asparagus nor arti- 
chokes are so good cold as they are when 
just tepid ; freshly cooked and allowed to 
cool down so as to be just not cold, both 
these vegetables are peculiarly delicate when 
eaten with a sauce of oil and vinegar, mixed 
on your plate at the moment of eating. 

Artichokes h la Barigoule. — Blanch your 
artichokes — that is to say, parboil them in 
boiling salted water (one quarter of an ounce 



46 DELICATE FEASTING. 

of salt per quart) ; then cool them off with 
cold water ; drain and remove the leaves of 
the heart, so that you may be able to pull 
out the woolly centre, or flower. Season 
with pepper and salt ; place them in a fry- 
ing-pan, with a few spoonfuls of olive oil, and 
fry the tips of the leaves, laying the arti- 
chokes in the pan bottom upwards. 

Then you take a sufficient quantity of gar- 
nish, composed of mushrooms, parsley, shal- 
lots — the mushrooms and parsley in equal 
quantities ; the shallots only half as much — 
and chop very finely. Place on the fire in a 
saucepan — with butter and salt and pepper — 
the shallots first of all, and stir with a spoon 
for five minutes ; then add the chopped mush- 
rooms and parsley, and stir over the fire an- 
other five minutes. Next take for each arti- 
choke the value of one ounce of bacon. We 
will suppose that you are cooking four arti- 
chokes ; you will need about a wineglassful 
of herb garnish, to which you will add four 
ounces of grated bacon, one quarter ounce of 
butter, one quarter ounce of flour, and a wine- 
glassful of good bouillon. Place all these 
ingredients in a saucepan over a brisk fire 
for five minutes, and stir with a wooden 
spoon. 



ON VEGETABLES. 4/ 

Then, In the cups formed by the four arti- 
chokes that you have prepared by hollowing 
out the woolly centre you place a quarter of 
your sauce ; tie a string round each one, to 
hold the leaves together ; put a speck of ba- 
con on the top of each one ; arrange them in a 
dish, with two wineglassfuls of bouillon, and 
cook the whole for twenty minutes, with fire 
above and fire below, like a dish au gratin, or 
else in an oven. Before serving squeeze over 
each artichoke three drops of orange or lemon 
juice. 

This dish is composed of simple ingredi- 
ents, but it requires to be prepared with great 
care. All good cooking is the result of care, 
undivided attention^ and love of the art. 



Green Pease a la Frangaise. — The French 
call green ^QdiSQ,petits pois or "little pease," 
" young pease." They must be gathered 
young. The English eat pease when they 
have grown hard as shot — that is to say, 
when they are no longer " young pease," but 
about seed -pease. So, then, we will take a 
quart of young and tender pease, freshly 
shelled ; put them in a two-quart saucepan, 
with a quarter of a pound of first -quality 
butter (N.B. — You cannot achieve superfine 



48 DELICATE FEASTING. 

cooking with poor butter. So-called kitchen- 
butter is an abomination, hi the kitchen you 
need the fittest and most delicate butter) ; a 
wineglassful of water ; two ounces of white, 
small onions ; a little salt, or no salt if the 
butter is already salt ; one ounce of powdered 
sugar. 

Cover your saucepan well, and stew over a 
moderate fire for half an hour. When they 
are cooked taste and add more sugar if need- 
ful, and about a quarter of a pound more 
butter mixed with half flour. Work your 
pease round in the saucepan over the fire, so 
that the flour and butter may get thoroughly 
distributed, and then serve. 

This is a dish to be served and eaten alone, 
and not messed up on a plate with meat, 
gravy, okra, green-corn, and half a dozen oth- 
er things. 

String Beans a la Frangaise. — Prepare your 
beans, which should be young, with the bean 
just forming ; when eaten, the presence and 
shape of the bean or grain itself ought 
not to be felt ; what we desire to eat is the 
green pod, the juicy envelope of the grain. 
Gather the beans young. The preparation 
consists in pinching of the ends, removing 



ON VEGETABLES. 49 

the stringy fibre lengthwise, and sHcing the 
bean slantingly into two or three sec- 
tions. 

For one pound of green beans you want a 
pot that will hold nearly a gallon of water, 
in which you will put half an ounce of salt. 
When the water boils put in your beans, 
cook, and drain them. In a frying-pan for 
sauteing, you melt two ounces of butter ; then 
you put in the beans, fry them for seven or 
eight minutes on a brisk fire, add salt and 
pepper to taste, and sprinkle over with finely 
chopped parsley or chervil. A teaspoonful 
of lemon-juice may also be added with ad- 
vantage before serving. 

The French make great use of lettuce as a 
vegetable, and a most excellent vegetable it 
is. I will give you a few recipes of applica- 
tions of the cooked lettuce which have come 
under my notice. 

First of all,, an amiable Parisian hostess, 
who has published some of her secrets in the 
*^ 100 Recettes de Mile. Francoise" (Paris: I. 
Renoult), introduced me to 

Laitues a la Crhne. — Take the hearts of 
cabbage lettuces, wash them, and bleach them 
for a quarter of an hour in boiling salted 
4 



50 DELICATE FEASTING. 

water. (N.B. — Do not put the lid on your 
saucepan, remembering the general directions 
about cooking vegetables and preserving their 
green color.) Next take the lettuces out of the 
boiling water, put them in a sieve, throw cold 
water over them, and let them drain thor- 
oughly. Then, in a dish which will stand 
heat, put some cream, some small lumps of 
butter, and finally the lettuce hearts ; pour on 
more cream, seasoned with salt and pepper, 
and cover with a thin layer of cracker crumbs. 
Cook for an hour and a quarter in a mod- 
erate oven, where the whole will simmer 
gently. Serve in the dish in which it has 
been cooked, 

Laitues aujus. — Take four or six, or more, 
firm cabbage lettuces ; strip off the poor outer 
leaves ; wash them, and bleach them for ten 
minutes in boiling salted water, without any 
lid on the pan. Take them out of the pan ; 
cool them by throwing cold water on them ; 
drain them, and press them in a sieve until 
there remains not a drop of water. Season 
them with the least speck of salt on each let- 
tuce ; put them in a saucepan ; cover them 
with bouillon, and add some of the skimming 
of the pot au feic, or some pieces of bacon, 



ON VEGETABLES. 5 1 

a savory bouquet, a pricked onion, and two 
cloves. Cover the saucepan closely by tying 
paper over it, and let the whole simmer for 
two hours. Drain carefully, and serve with 
gravy. 



VI. 

ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 

" The fundamental principle of all 
Is what ingenious cooks The Relish call; 
For when the market sends in loads of food 
They all are tasteless till that makes them good." 

" T/i£ Art of Cookery." 

The worthy cook who is empress of my 
kitchen, queen of my stomach, and, therefore, 
mistress of my humor, won my confidence 
by a simple remark that she made the first 
time I had friends to dinner after she had 
entered upon her duties. '' Monsieur," she 
said, for she is of Gaulish origin ; '' monsieur, 
I am very pleased to see that none of the 
gentlemen last night touched the salt-cellar. 
I could not desire a finer compliment." 

If I or my guests had found it necessary 
to ruffle the smooth surface of the salt-cellar, 
and add a pinch to any of the dishes, it 
would have been a proof that my cook had 
not succeeded in seasoning her dishes to the 
point. 



ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 53 

A cook having any self-respect, and any 
respect for his art, has a right to feel insulted 
if a guest proceeds to powder his food with 
salt and pepper before having even tasted it. 
Such a barbarous proceeding implies disas- 
trous social antecedents on the part of the 
guest, unaccustomedness to delicate eating, or 
a callousness and bluntness of palate which 
renders him unworthy to taste any but the 
rankest food and the most scarifying of spir- 
ituous liquors. 

For such palates as these, deadened by the 
abuse of tobacco and whiskey, special rel- 
ishes have been invented of a penetrating and 
fiery nature, fabricated according to recipes 
bequeathed by deceased noblemen, and sold 
in bottles decorated with strange labels and 
under titles which I will not enumerate. 

In order to facilitate the use of these dia- 
bolical and dyspepsia-producigg relishes the 
contrivance known as a cruet-stand has been 
elaborated, and now, for years and years, has 
figured on Anglo-Saxon dinner- tables as a 
hideous and ever-present reminder of the 
wretched state into which the art of cookery 
has fallen in Anglo-Saxon countries. 

Let it be remembered, first of all and 
above all, that seasoning is the business of 



54 DELICATE FEASTING. 

the cook, and that unless the relish is impart- 
ed to the food during the process of cooking 
it cannot be imparted afterwards. When 
your meat or vegetables are served on the 
table and on your plate, you will vainly 
sprinkle them with salt and pepper and 
sauces ; you will simply be eating meat and 
vegetables and seasoning matter, but you 
will not be eating seasoned meat or seasoned 
vegetables. 

The great superiority of French cooking over 
all other cookery lies hi the thorongJi compre- 
hension of tJie role and methods of seasoning 
in cookery. 

The perfection of seasoning brings out the 
peculiar savor of each article of food, and 
never allows the seasoning to usurp the place 
of the savor. The skill of the cook is shown 
by the nicety with which he judges his pro- 
portions so as to form a suave whole, in 
which all the elements are harmonized and 
none allowed to dominate. 

It is in the seasoning that the art and sen- 
timent of the cook are shown. No book can 
teach how to make a sauce to perfection ; it 
is almost useless, not to say impossible, to 
work with scales and measures and accord- 
ing to nicely figured formulae ; the true cook 



ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 55 

works by experience and feeling. A true 
cook, be it remembered, is an artist, and not a 
Johannes Factotum. 



Relish in food is produced by various 
means. 

1. By the simple process of cooking, as in 

roasting, grilling, etc., where, as already 
explained, the cooking develops a pecul- 
iar aroma, agreeable to the taste and 
conducive to digestion, because it ex- 
cites in a healthy manner the secretion 
of the gastric juices. 

2. By the admixture in the process of cook- 

ing of aromatic condiments, spices, sa- 
vory herbs, and salt. 

3. By sauces properly so called. 

The role of condiments is to please the taste, 
to excite the physical energy of the digestive 
tube, and to increase to a notable extent the 
secretions of its different parts. Condiments, 
if properly used, assure digestion and hasten 
the absorption of food by the system. 

The French cooks are constantly using a 
bouquet garni as a means of seasoning. This 
bouquet is composed in the proportions of 
one ounce of green parsley, one and a half 
pennyweights of thyme, and the same quan- 



56 DELICATE FEASTING. 

tity of bay-laurel. Wash your parsley, roll 
up your thyme and laurel into a little bun- 
dle, fold the parsley around, and bind the 
whole with thread or cotton into a little 
packet about two inches long. Three cloves 
may or may not be added to this bouquet, 
according to the tastes of the company. The 
same remark holds good also as regards the 
addition of a young onion. 

A simple bouquet is composed of chives 
and parsley tied up into a little bundle. 

All kinds of bouquets must be removed 
from the dishes in the kitchen before serving. 
Gouff^ gives the following mixture of all- 
spice for use especially in seasoning pasties, 
galantine, and other cold dishes. 

Take one quarter ounce thyme, 
" one quarter ounce bay-laurel, 
" one eighth ounce marjoram, 
*' one eighth ounce rosemary. 
Dry these four herbs thoroughly by artifi- 
cial heat, and when they are thoroughly dry 
pound them finely in a mortar with 
one half ounce nutmeg, 
one half ounce cloves, 
one quarter ounce white pepper-corns, 
one eighth ounce cayenne pepper. 
Pound the whole finely, sift, and keep for 



ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 5/ 

use in a well-corked bottle. This allspice is 
used alone or mixed with salt, the proportion 
being four times as much salt as spice. 

Supposing you have to season three pounds 
of galantine, the dose required, according to 
Gouffe, would be one ounce of salt and spice 
mixed in the above proportions. 

The best way of seasoning fish whose flesh 
is not naturally full-flavored or extreme- 
ly delicate is to cook it in seasoned wa- 
ter, or, as the French call it, in a court-bouillon. 



The real cotirt-bouillon is made thus : On 
the bottom of your fish-kettle lay a bed of 
sliced carrots, sliced onions, green parsley, 
thyme, bay-laurel, a sliced lemon or a sliced 
orange, and some whole pepper, say twenty 
grains (not grains in weight, but grains in the 
botanical sense). On this bed lay your fish, 
and cover it with half white wine and half 
water (and if you have no white wine use 
vinegar or verjuice, two or three wineglass- 
fuls added to the water). Put your kettle on 
a moderate fire, and as soon as the hquid boils 
withdraw it immediately, and take out your 
fish,which you will find to be perfectly cooked. 

Fish must always be put into cold court- 
bouillon. 



58 DELICATE FEASTING. 

The court-bouillon may be prepared before- 
hand, and cooled down before the fish is put in ; 
the court-bouillon may also be kept and used 
several times, provided it be reboiled every 
three or four days, a little water being added 
each time to supply loss by evaporation. 

Naturally a court -bouillon prepared before- 
hand will savor more strongly of the aromatic 
ingredients in it than a new court-bouillon. 

If wine is abundant, of course it may be 
substituted for water almost entirely. 

Remark that in countries where wine is not 
commonly used for kitchen purposes the court- 
bouillon may be made quite satisfactorily with 
vinegar and lemons. Even in France many 
an economical housekeeper will not sacrifice 
a bottle of white wine to boil a fish. With 
wine, of course, the result is more delicate and 
richer. But wine is not absolutely necessary 
for success. 

Both fresh-water and sea fish may be ad- 
vantageously cooked in court-bouillon, with 
the exception, of course, of such fine kinds 
as the lordly turbot. 

For a fish like pike, for instance, you can 
heighten the flavor of the court-bouillon by 
the addition of a little ginger and a few cloves ; 
some cooks even add garlic, but to my mind 



ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 59 

garlic is too acrid a condiment to be used in 
cooking any kind of fish. I do not guarantee 
that pike cooked thus is equal to a pike roast- 
ed according to the directions given by Izaak 
Walton, which is, as he says, " a dish of meat 
too good for any but anglers or very honest 
men." But Izaak Walton forbids the appli- 
cation of his recipe to a pike less than three 
quarters of a yard, whereas a pike of only a 
quarter of a yard long may be cooked in a 
court-bouillon. 

Wine is of great utility to the cook ; and 
by wine I mean fermented grape-juice, not 
necessarily Bordeaux or Burgundy wine, but 
Ohio wine or Australian wine, provided the 
sweeter kinds are avoided. 

Even unfermented grape-juice may often 
be employed in developing flavor. A roast 
partridge that has been basted with the fresh 
juice of white grapes, of any but the muscat 
kind, is a fine dish. 

All game, without exception, requires the 
application of some sour, in order to devel- 
op the savor thoroughly. This is the theo- 
retical explanation of the custom of serving 
salad with this course. 

For making most of the fine sauces wine 



60 DELICATE FEASTING. 

is as indispensable as butter, and success can 
only be obtained if both articles are good. 
" Kitchen "-wine and *' kitchen "-butter are 
fatal to good cookery. The cook requires 
the best butter and good ordinary wine, but 
not Chateau Yquem or Chateau Lafitte or 
Tokay. Burgundy, or its American equiva- 
lent, for kitchen purposes, needs to be a 
strong and full-flavored wine, and Bordeaux, 
or its American equivalent, a sound and dry 
wine. The Madeira and Spanish wines used 
in cooking need to be simply unadulterated, 
but not necessarily fine and dear wines. 



The matelote of fresh-water fish is a way 
of cooking in wine which is much practised 
in France, where at every river-side inn you 
may see the sign ''■Matelote et FritureT And 
a noble dish it is, when well made. The finest 
matelotes I have eaten were made in a skillet 
hung over a blazing wood-fire in a farm-house 
on the banks of the Loire ; and half the secret 
of success seemed to be in the fact that the 
tongues of flame glided freely around the cal- 
dron, and set fire to the boiling wine just at 
the critical moment. Over an ordinary and 
comparatively cramped kitchen-fire success is 
only to be obtained by more careful manipu- 
lation, and this is the way you must proceed: 



ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 6 1 

Take an eel and a pike, or a carp, or a 
perch, or a barbel, or any combinations of 
these fish which the larder may offer, even 
an eel alone, or, better, an eel and a pike ; 
clean them and cut them up into pieces about 
two inches square. Suppose that you have 
two good pounds of fish. First, take a sauce- 
pan into which you put two ounces of butter 
and twenty small onions peeled and blanched. 
Let your onions get browned over the fire ; 
then add one and a half ounces of flour, pep- 
per and salt, and stir for five minutes, adding a 
few mushrooms previously browned in butter 
and a little lemon-juice, and a little water if 
the mixture needs it. Then add one pint of 
red wine, a bouquet garni, a clove of garlic, 
pepper and salt, and a pint of good bouillon 
or meat-juice. Cover your pot, and let this 
mixture simmer twenty minutes. 

Then put in your slices of eel and of the 
less tender fish (as carp, for instance), and 
cook for a quarter of an hour. 

Next put in your tender fish, add a wine- 
glassful of brandy, and cook five or ten min- 
utes longer. Take out the bouquet and the 
garlic, and serve on a dish with the onions 
and sauce poured over the fish. The sauce 
will be creamy, and of a bluish-brown color. 



62 DELICATE FEASTING. 

(N.B. — Not the least essential thing in the 
above recipe is the meat-juice. If you have 
not meat-juice or good bouillon you must put 
two pints of wine instead of one.) 

Another way of making a matelote is to 
put the fish in the bottom of a pan with a 
bouquet garni and garlic or not, as you please ; 
cover the fish with wine, and as soon as the 
wine boils pour in half a glass of strong bran- 
dy and fire the whole. Let the mixture blaze 
and cook for a quarter of an hour, and then 
serve on a dish with your ragout of small on- 
ions, flour and mushrooms peppered, salted, 
and prepared apart in a pan, as described in 
the beginning of the above recipe. 

The essence of the matelote lies in the em- 
ployment of wine instead of water to stew 
the fish in ; and, as already stated, complete 
success can only be achieved by the happy 
combination of wine and the juice of meat. 
The onions, mushrooms, etc., are merely de- 
tails, but indispensable details, in the season- 
ing and thickening of the sauce. 

(N.B. — Instead of, or together with, butter, 
little slices of bacon may be used to brown 
the onions.) 

To the many ways of preparing oysters 



ON RELISH AND SEASONING. 63 

may be added the following recipes, copied 
from a rare and valuable seventeenth-century 
book called '' Les D^lices de la Campagne ; 
ou est enseigne a preparer pour Tusage de la 
vie tout ce qui croist sur la terre et dans les 
eaux. Dedie aux Dames menageres " (Paris, 
1654). In those days oysters were eaten raw, 
with pepper ; fried in the half-shell, with a 
speck of butter and pepper on each oyster, 
and served, when cooked, with a drop of ver- 
juice or vinegar and a bit of grated nutmeg ; 
en ettivee, that is to say, detached from the 
shell and placed in a pan with their liquor, 
some butter, a little pepper, some nutmeg, 
some chives, and a few bits of orange or 
lemon, and so boiled slowly, and served with 
grated bread-crumbs round the dish; en fri- 
cassee in a frying-pan with a roux of sliced on- 
ion and butter, the oysters being put into the 
roux with the liquor, and when they are al- 
most cooked you add a few drops of vinegar, 
with some chopped parsley, and even a lit- 
tle mustard ; drained on a napkin, peppered, 
dipped in batter, and fried in hot lard, then 
served with fried parsley round the dish and 
an orange squeezed over them. The same 
precious and practical little book tells us how 
to pickle oysters by taking them out of the 



64 DELICATE FEASTING. 

shell, placing them in layers in a jar or bar- 
rel, peppering and salting each layer, and add- 
ing bay-laurel, cinnamon, green fennel, and, 
if you are rich enough, a little musk or am- 
ber. When you take them out of the bar- 
rel for use, soak them awhile if they are 
too salt, and then prepare them in the ways 
above described, or eat them with oil, or eat 
them as they are. These pickled oysters 
^' may also be used for giving flavor to ra- 
gouts and roast fowl of various kinds, and for 
a thousand other seasonings which the cook 
shall judge fit." 



VII. 

ACETARIA, OR CONCERNING THE 
DRESSING OF SAIADS. 

A SALAD is a dish composed of certain 
herbs or vegetables seasoned with salt and 
pepper, oil and vinegar, or some other acid 
element. 

The term salad is also applied to certain 
cold dishes composed of cold meats, fish, etc., 
seasoned like a salad, and combined with 
salads. 

You also speak of an orange salad when 
the fruit is cut into slices and seasoned in 
sweetened alcohol. 

As an aliment, salads vary greatly in nutri- 
tious quality, according to their composition 
and constituent elements. The leaf salads, 
like lettuce, endive, sorrel, etc., contain little 
but water and mineral salts. 

Of all the methods of seasoning a salad 
proper, the simple, so-called French dressing 
is the most delicate, the most worthy of the 
gourmet's palate, and the most hygienic. 
5 



66 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Let it be remarked that a salad may be 
made a constant element in the ahmentary 
regime ; that it is an agreeable, amusing, and 
healthy thing to eat ; that it is an econom- 
ical and democratic dish, and not a dish 
merely for the fashionable world. Incident- 
ally let it be remarked that the fashionable 
world enjoys no privileges in the art of cook- 
ing, except so far as concerns certain quintes- 
sential sauces which can only be made in 
elaborately mounted kitchens and at consid- 
erable expense. Indeed, as a rule the fash- 
ionable world fares badly, more especially 
in America, where the services of a " caterer " 
are so largely used. The veiy name of '' ca- 
terer" has something gross and crude about 
it which shocks the real gourmet. A man 
or a woman who invites you to dine is re- 
sponsible for your health and happiness as 
long as the hospitality lasts and even after- 
wards. But how few hosts have a right sense 
of the respect which they owe to their guests. 
How absolutely hard-hearted, uncharitable, 
and egoistic is the host or hostess who con- 
ceives a dinner-party merely as an occasion 
for show and ostentation, has his or her table 
set out with flowers and silver and crystal, 
and orders a " caterer," a purveyor of food, to 



DRESSING SALADS. 6^ 

serve a dinner at so much a head. What a 
crude state of civiHzation this condition of 
things impHes ! 

But, to return from this digression, let us 
consider, first of all, salads of uncooked veg- 
etables and herbs. Such salads are made of 
lettuce — either cabbage or cos lettuce, which 
latter the French call Romaine, and which is 
the most delicate — endive, corn-salad — this 
is a species of Valeriana or rather valerianella 
locusta, called by the French Mdche — chicory, 
both wild and curly, sorrel, celery, garden 
and water-cresses, little white radishes called 
in French raiponce, beet-root, tomatoes, cu- 
cumbers. 

To give flavor to salads, you use the small 
and fine herbs that are in season, such as 
chervil, chives, tarragon, pimpernel, balm, 
mint, etc. In the spring all or some of these 
seasoning herbs above mentioned may be 
combined and eaten as a salad by them- 
selves. Such a salad bears the name of 
Vendome. 

The vegetables and herbs that are to be 
used uncooked must have been specially cul- 
tivated for the purpose ; that is to say, they 
must have been grown rapidly, abundaiitly 
watered, and properly bleached during growth. 



68 DELICATE FEASTING. 

These conditions are necessary to render the 
leaves crisp and tender, A salad that re- 
quires powerful and prolonged mastication 
is a nuisance^ and to eat it is waste of 
time. Unless a lettuce is so tender that it 
seems to melt coolly in your mouth, you may 
just as well eat a cabbage salad. The culti- 
vation of vegetables and herbs for salads is a 
special branch of market-gardening requiring 
constant care in watering, forcing, and bleach- 
ing the plants, and in regulating their ripen- 
ing in such succession that there may be 
salads ready for market each day, neither un- 
dergrown nor overgrown, but just mature, 
juicy, and tender. Salads left to grow by 
themselves in an ordinary kitchen-garden are 
usually tough and stringy ; the watering has 
been insufficient ; the sun has scorched the 
epidermis of the leaves ; the rain has splashed 
the soil up into the heart of the plant ; the 
fibre is dry and woody. The gardener who 
cultivates for the kitchen must tend his 
plants with extreme care, in order to grow 
them satisfactorily from the point of view of 
the cook and of the gourmet. 

Having obtained a fine cos lettuce, we will 
say for an example, how are we to make it 
into a salad ? First of all, strip off and throw 



DRESSING OF SALADS. 69 

away the outer leaves, which are too green 
and tough, and which are often bruised and 
dirty. Then take your lettuce, cut it into 
four quarters, beginning at the base ; take off 
the larger leaves one by one until you reach 
the heart ; carefully wash each leaf and drain 
the whole. A spherical wire basket is useful 
for draining a salad ; you put the leaves in 
the basket and swing it violently to and fro, 
and so shake the water out. Get your leaves 
as dry as possible ; even wipe them with a 
towel after having shaken them in the wire 
basket — the reason being that whenever there 
is any water left on the leaves the dressing 
will not get distributed. The lettuce having 
been well washed and dried, you arrange the 
leaves loosely in the salad-bowl, which should 
be large and roomy, say about one and a 
half times the volume of the mass of the 
salad, in order that you may have plenty of 
room to turn it during the seasoning process. 
On the top of the salad you lay a handful of 
seasoning herbs, chervil and chives and a 
sprig of tarragon. In this state the salad is 
served if it is to be seasoned at table ; in 
any case the salad must not be seasoned un- 
til a few minutes before it is eaten, with the 
reserve to be made further on. 



JO DELICATE FEASTING. 

Now we come to the operation of sea- 
soning and mixing. The tools needed are a 
salad-spoon and fork, and the best are the 
simplest and the cleanest, namely, a spoon 
and fork of boxwood. Beware of the dread- 
ful inventions of artistic silversmiths. In 
table-service it often happens that the highest 
luxury is the extremest simplicity. First 
of all, you take up with your fingers as much 
of the seasoning herbs as you think fit, and 
with a knife cut them up finely over the 
salad-bowl ; then you take your salad-spoon 
and put into it salt and pepper in sufficient 
quantity ; then you pour a little vinegar into 
the spoon and stir the salt and pepper with 
the fork until the salt dissolves and the pep- 
per gets well mixed with the vinegar ; then 
you sprinkle this mixture over your salad and 
turn it with the spoon and fork in order to 
distribute the seasoned vinegar and the 
chopped herbs as thoroughly as possible over 
every leaf ; finally, you measure out so many 
spoonfuls of oil and turn your salad again 
and again until the oil is fairly distributed 
over every leaf. The salad is then ready to 
be eaten. 

As regards the quantities of salt, pepper, 
oil, vinegar, and fine herbs, it is impossible to 



DRESSING OF SALADS. 7 1 

be precise, the delicacy of the human pal- 
ate varies so widely, according to the climate 
and according to national and individual hab- 
its. It will always be best to gauge the sea- 
soning by the most delicate palate at table. 
In short, the quantities of salt, pepper, and 
vinegar will vary greatly according to indi- 
vidual tastes, and also according to the 
strength of the salt, the pepper, and particu- 
larly of the vinegar. To my mind, any man- 
ufactured vinegar is too strong for fine let- 
tuce salad, and, instead of vinegar, I use 
lemon-juice. Indeed, for all uncooked salads 
I prefer lemon-juice to vinegar; and unless 
one can make sure of obtaining real wine 
vinegar, I should certainly use lemon-juice 
for all salad dressing. Lemon -juice is the 
most delicate and deliciously perfumed acid 
that Nature has given the cook. As for the 
pepper, never use the powdered pepper that 
you buy at the grocer's, and which has gener- 
ally lost its flavor before it reaches the depths 
of the pepper-castor. The only pepper wor- 
thy to titillate the papillse of a civiHzed 
man is that ground out of the pepper-corn, 
at the moment of use, in a Httle hand-mill. 
Here, again, we must beware of the inven- 
tions ofvthe silversmiths, none of which are 



72 DELICATE FEASTING. 

SO practical and handy as the simple wooden 
mill. 

In describing the process of dressing a let- 
tuce salad I mixed the salt and pepper in 
vinegar and poured the oil on last of all. 
This rule is not absolute. Some mix the 
pepper and salt in oil, but this, I am con- 
vinced, is a mistake, because the salt does 
not readily dissolve in oil, and the distribu- 
tion of the condiments is less complete. But 
as regards oil first or vinegar first, the choice 
is difficult. In point of fact, a salad must al- 
ways be a compromise : wherever a leaf is 
smeared over with oil the vinegar will not 
rest, and wherever the vinegar rests on a 
leaf the oil will not stay. If you pour your 
vinegar on first the salad will have a sharper 
and more piquant taste ; if you apply the 
oil first the dressing will be more deli- 
cate. 

In order to make a good lettuce salad you 
require good lettuce, good salt, good pepper, 
good vinegar or lemon-juice, and olive oil of 
the best quality; and then if you do not pay 
careful attention to every detail of the prep- 
aration, dressing, and mixing, your salad will 
not be a success. Good materials, good meth- 
ods, intelligence, and attention are as neces- 



DRESSING OF SALADS. 73 

sary in salad-making as in any other branch 
of the cook's art. 

Note also that in cookery you cannot ab- 
breviate the processes ; for instance, I have 
read, in a cook-book written by an Anglo- 
Saxon woman, that the best way to operate 
is " to mix the pepper and salt, the oil, the 
chopped chives, and the vinegar all togeth- 
er, and when well mingled to pour the mixt- 
ure over the salad, or place the salad over it 
and mix all together." This is rank heresy. 
The mixture thus produced would be a vis- 
cous liquid, a sort of half-made mayonnaise^ 
utterly different in consistency and taste 
from the distribution of oil and vinegar each 
separately. 

For convenience it may be noted that a 
salad may be oiled an hour or more before 
it is served. If you have plenty of hands in 
the kitchen you may have each leaf oiled sep- 
arately with a brush, which is a very ideal 
way of proceeding. Beware^ however^ of put- 
ting salt on the salad before it is served^ or 
vinegar either ; the salt would draw all the 
water out of the salad and leave it limp and 
flimsy, while the acid would eat into the 
leaves and reduce them to a pulpy state. 

A salad of Romaine lettuce is so delicate 



74 DELICATE FEASTING. 

that it admits of no mixtures or garnishings. 
A salad of ordinary cabbage lettuce may be 
garnished with hard-boiled eggs, shelled and 
cut in four, also with olives. 

Tarragon vinegar, that is vinegar in which 
a branch of tarragon is left to soak, may be 
used preferably to the fresh leaves of tar- 
ragon for salad-dressing. 

Vinegar for dressing salads may be pre- 
pared also as follows : In the bottom of an 
earthen pitcher put a handful of tarragon, 
half as much garden-cress, half as much cher- 
vil, some fresh pimpernel leaves, and one 
clove of garlic. Over this pour one gallon 
of vinegar, let it infuse a week, clarify, and 
bottle for use. 

In preparing a salad of curly chicory, be- 
ware of allowing the leaves to stand in water, 
otherwise they will become hard ; the same 
remark applies to celery. 

For seasoning a salad of curly chicory, pro- 
ceed in the manner above described for the 
usual French dressing, omitting only the 
chives, but before turning the salad, put in a 
chap07i^ a Gascony capon as it is called. This 
is a small crust of bread about an inch square, 
rubbed over with garlic. During the mixing, 
this crust, impregnated with the perfume of 



DRESSING OF SALADS. JS 

garlic, but without its rankness, comes into 
light contact with every leaf, and communi- 
cates to the whole a slight aroma of the 
onion, so dear to the Gascons, and to all Lat- 
in men. You may or may not like this aro- 
ma, but, in any case do not forget the chapon^ 
the perfumed crust, as a means of communi- 
cating flavors very lightly. 

In cookery we learn the eternal principles, 
and each one composes according as he has 
more or less imagination. I have explained 
the way of preparing and dressing a lettuce 
salad with oil and vinegar in the French 
style. This description will serve as a type 
and basis, which may be applied to various 
simple and compound salads of uncooked, 
and also of cooked vegetables, some of which 
I briefly note. 

One of the finest salads, to be eaten either 
alone or with game, especially partridges or 
wild duck, is a mixture of celery, beet-root, 
and corn-salad — if corn-salad cannot be ob- 
tained, water-cress will make a poor substi- 
tute, when broken into small tufts. The 
beets are cut into slices one sixteenth of an 
inch thick, the celery, which must be young 
and tender, and thoroughly white, should be 
cut into pieces an inch long, and then sliced 



76 DELICATE FEASTING. 

lengthwise into two or three pieces. (N.B. — 
Select only the slender inside branches of 
celery.) This salad will require plenty of oil, 
and more acid than a lettuce salad, because 
of the sweetness and absorbent nature of the 
beet-root. The general seasoning, too, must 
be rather high, because the flavors of the 
celery and of the beet are pronounced. 

A potato-salad ought not to be made with 
cold boiled potatoes, as the cook-books gen- 
erally state, even the best of them. A po- 
tato-salad ought not to be made with pota- 
toes that have remained over from a previous 
meal. The potatoes must be boiled in salt 
water expressly for the salad ; allowed to 
cool, sliced into the salad-bowl, and seasoned 
in the French style with oil and vinegar, 
served and eaten while still almost tepid. A 
potato-salad should be abundantly garnished 
with finely chopped herbs, chervil, chives, 
and a suspicion of tarragon ; furthermore, as 
the floury nature of the potatoes absorbs 
the vinegar rapidly, in order to make up the 
quantity of acid liquid needful for success, 
throw in a little white wine, say three or four 
times as much white wine as you have used 
of vinegar or lemon-juice. 

The Japanese salad invented by the 



DRESSING OF SALADS. JJ 

younger Dumas, and celebrated in his play 
of '^ Francillon," is a potato-salad as above 
described, with the addition of some mussels 
cooked in a court-bouillon flavored with cel- 
ery. This salad is served with a layer of 
sliced truffles on the top, and the truffles 
ought to have been cooked in champagne 
rather than in Madeira. 

Another potato-salad worthy of respectful 
attention consists of potatoes thinly sliced, a 
pound of truffles cooked in white wine and 
thinly sliced, two red herrings boned and 
broken up into small flakes. The dressing 
is a good white mayonnaise, with a dash of 
mustard. This salad requires to be seasoned 
and mixed some six hours before it is served. 

For a salad of cooked vegetables, or, as it 
is also called, a macedoine, you need freshly 
and expressly cooked vegetables: potatoes, 
string-beans, lima or haricot beans, pease, 
cauliflower, carrots, turnips, parsnips, beet- 
root, hearts of artichokes, asparagus tops, or 
as many of these ingredients as you can com- 
mand. These different vegetables must, of 
course, have been cooked, each separately, in 
salt water ; then plunged into cold water in 
order to prevent them from turning yellow ; 
and then carefully drained before being ar- 



78 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ranged ornamentally in the salad-bowl. (N.B. 
— Drain carefully, for any residue of water im- 
pairs the success of the salad.) Certain of 
the above vegetables may be cut into dice 
or lozenges before being put into boiling 
water to cook. 

A macedohie may be seasoned either with 
oil and vinegar, with a white mayonnaise, or 
with a green jnayonnaise a la ravigote. 

For fish and meat salads, for which recipes 
abound, the mayonnaise dressing is to be 
used. In America, the mayonnaise dressing 
seems to be used for all kinds of salad ; in 
England, too, there is a ready-made white 
abomination sold in bottles under the name 
of salad-dressing. I call attention to these 
facts only to disapprove. The gourmet will 
make a distinction between salads proper 
and mixed salads containing flesh and strong 
elements, and the former he will prepare 
with oil and vinegar, while he will season the 
more heavy and substantial compounds with 
a heavier and more strongly spiced dress- 
ing. 

The making of mayonnaise sauce has been 
frequently described in American cook-books, 
and yet in two that I have before me, one 
dated 1886, and the other 1887, the recipes 



DRESSING OF SALADS. 79 

are either incomplete or wanting in clear- 
ness, so that I repeat the directions, seri- 
atim. 

Take a soup-plate or shallow bowl, a 
wooden or a silver fork, fine olive oil, vin- 
egar, salt, pepper, mustard already mixed, 
fresh eggs, and some one to help you at the 
critical moment. You will fix the number 
of eggs according to the quantity of sauce 
you desire, the proportion being a quarter of 
a pound of oil to each egg. In your soup- 
plate put the yolk of one or more eggs, tak- 
ing care to remove the germ and all the zvhite ; 
beat your yolk well for nearly a minute by 
stirring it always in the same direction ; then 
add oil, drop by drop, about a teaspoonful 
at a time, and never adding more oil until 
the preceding quantity has become thorough- 
ly amalgamated with the egg ; remember 
that the stirring must go on absolutely with- 
out interruption, and always in the same di- 
rection ; at every eighth spoonful of oil add 
a few drops of vinegar, a pinch of salt, a 
pinch of pepper, a spot of mustard. The per- 
son who is helping you will drop these in- 
gredients into the sauce at the word of com- 
mand, while you keep on turning assiduously. 
You continue this process, adding vinegar, 



80 DELICATE FEASTING. 

condiments, and oil until you have exhausted 
your quantity of oil ; then you taste and 
heighten the seasoning or the piquancy, as 
occasion may dictate. 

Some people whose palates are jaded add 
cayenne pepper to the seasoning. In some 
American books I have seen the addition of 
sugar recommended. To this latter addition 
I am absolutely opposed ; it is ridiculous 
and useless. 

If, by ill-luck, the mayonnaise curdles while 
you are making it, stop at once ; start another 
Qgg in a clean plate, and add your curdled 
sauce by degrees to the new sauce, and the 
whole will come out good, yellow, and with 
the consistency of very rich, thick cream. 
Provided the oil and the eggs used are in 
normal conditions of freshness, the curdling 
or decomposition of the amalgam can only 
be due to sudden excess of oil or of vinegar, 
so that in remixing you must moderate the 
one or the other accordingly. 

Green mayonnaise is the above sauce with 
the addition of three tablespoonfuls of ra- 
vigote for each quarter of a pound of oil. 
Ravigote is chervil, tarragon, common garden- 
cress, and pimpernel, cooked for two minutes 
in boiling salt-water, then plunged in cold 



DRESSING OF SALADS. 8 1 

water, drained, pounded in a mortar, and 
strained. 

A less perfect green mayonnaise may be 
made by simply adding to the sauce a hand- 
ful of very finely chopped chervil mixed in 
a spoonful of tarragon vinegar. 

To color mayonnaise green, do not use 
boiled and mashed green pease, as I have 
seen recommended in a cook-book which I 
need not mention. The reason is, that in a 
creamy sauce of the nature of mayonnaise^ 
we should be offended if we felt the rough- 
ness of any farinaceous matter intruding itself 
upon the palate. Spinach would be a less 
objectionable coloring matter. But unless 
you can do the thing properly, by means of 
a ravigote which has its special flavor and 
season, why attempt to color your mayon- 
naise ? Mere coloring, by make-shift means, 
will impair your sauce, instead of improving 
it. To the eye, a yellow mayonnaise is just 
as pleasing as a green one. 

Some one may object that we have a red 
mayonnaise. True, but red mayonnaise is 
not a decorative fancy, it is a quintessential 
compound made by pounding the coral of a 
lobster, and mixing the red puree thus ob- 
tained with ordinary white mayonnaise. This 
6 



82 DELICATE FEASTING. 

red mayonnaise is intended to make the 
serving of the lobster more complete, and 
not for show or table decoration. 

/// good cooking everything has a reason. 



VIII. 
THE THEORY OF SOUPS. 

" Soup," says Brillat-Savarin, " rejoices the 
stomach, and disposes it to receive and digest 
other food." 

The gourmet looks upon soup as a prepar- 
atory element in a refined dinner ; he takes a 
small quantity of it only, and does not ask 
for a second helping ; he requires it to be 
served hot, and not lukewarm, and in deep 
soup-plates, and not in bowls. A bowl of 
soup may be welcome to a traveller or to a 
simple eater, who wants merely to satisfy his 
hunger by quantities of nourishment. Re- 
member always that there is a difference be- 
tween dining and feeding. 

The great fault with the most popular Eng- 
lish soups, such as ox-tail, turtle, mock-turtle, 
mulligatawny, etc., is their strength and heav- 
iness. To begin dinner by absorbing a large 
portion of these preparations implies coarse- 
ness of conception and prodigious digestive 
powers. 



84 DELICATE FEASTING. 

When I hear the voice of the Anglo-Saxon 
waiter pronouncing behind my chair the la- 
conic formula, " Thick or clear, sir ?" my heart 
sinks as I think of the poverty of his wit and 
the grossness of the distinction he makes. 
Are there, then, but two soups in the world? 
What kind of thick soup? What kind of 
clear soup ? Know, good Anglo-Saxon wait- 
er, that although I take only a ladleful of 
soup, I require it to be perfection of its kind — 
a poem, a dream — something suave and com- 
forting, exceedingly pure in flavor. I neither 
want slops nor heavy messes charged with 
catsup and spices and salt and pepper. 
"Thick" and "clear" is, certainly, a broad 
distinction that may be made, but, as we 
have to borrow so much from the French 
in this gastronomic art, we cannot do bet- 
ter than employ their terms for extracts, 
compounds, and reductions, and classify our 
soups, or potages, as consommes^ purees^ or 
cremes. 

Soup, we must never forget, is intended to 
prepare the stomach for the dinner that is to 
follow. Heavy soups are, therefore, inadmissi- 
ble, because they constitute meals in them- 
selves, and encroach upon the domain of the 
dinner proper, which, as we have seen in pre- 



THE THEORY OF SOUPS. 85 

vious pages, is the grand event in our mate- 
rial daily life. 

In no branch of cookery has the imagina- 
tion of fanciful cooks been so industrious as 
in the combination and naming of soups. As 
we have over one hundred fairly distinct va- 
rieties of soup, it is desirable to avoid fancy 
names that convey no meaning, such as the 
names of princes and statesmen, and to call 
these soups by titles that give some idea of 
their composition. In this matter clearness 
and simplicity are desirable, and the example 
of Gouffe is to be followed in mentioning al- 
ways the characteristic ingredient of the soup, 
thus : potage a Voseille^ consomme aux pdtes 
d'halie^soupe aux choux, puree d'asperge, etc. 

Potage, or soup, is the generic term, though 
in French soupe is reserved for such soups as 
are served with bread in them, while potage 
is applied to soups without bread. 

Potages are divided into gras and maigres, 
according as they have been prepared with 
or without meat. 

Potages gras are made with bouillons or 
decoctions of all kinds of butchers' meat, 
fowl, fish, and crustaceans. In the same way 
potages maigres are made from all sorts of 
vegetables. 



86 DELICATE FEASTING. 

The na.me J>uree, or crhne, is given to thick 
soups made of alimentary substances crusted 
or pounded, such as game, pease, beans, len- 
tils, asparagus, etc. The soups are gener- 
ally very nourishing, but not easily digest- 
ible. 

Consoinme\?> the name given to the supreme 
result of the decoction of animal and vegeta- 
ble matter ; it is a perfect bouilloft, a bouillon 
consomme. In the cook-books you will find 
directions for making the ordinary coyisommey 
composed of the juices of beef, veal, and 
fowls decocted in grand bouillon^ or fine stocky 
and also for making consomme de volaillcy 
consomme de gibier, and consommes of vegeta- 
bles. 

Consomjne is necessary for making fine 
soups, but for household cookery the good 
ordinary stock is sufficient. (N.B. — Without 
good beef-stock it is impossible to make a 
dinner worthy of the name.) Stock is con- 
stantly required in the most simple opera- 
tions of cookery. The aversion of the An- 
glo-Saxon cook to making stock is one of the 
main sources of his inferiority. Extract of 
meat does 7iot take the place of stock. Extracts 
of^neat should be very sparingly used in a well- 
regulated kitchen^ and extracts of coffee never* 



THE THEORY OF SOUPS. 8/ 

As a rule, in cookery, avoid new inven- 
tions, scientific improvements, and every- 
thing that recommends itself in the name 
of Progress. Good cooking, like good paint- 
ing, is a question of genius and se7itiinent. 

Note that stock, or bouillon, is not an ali- 
ment; the ^o-z'd}X^<\ potages gras, which have 
a basis of bouillon, are not essentially ali- 
ments ; in general, the soups that are served 
at a scientific dinner are not aliments. As 
we have said above, soup is, theoretically, 
merely a preparation for the dinner ; it 
is a consolation to the hungry stomach, and 
at the same time an appetizer and a stimu- 
lant. 

The decoction of meat and vegetables 
which, under the names of consomme or bouil- 
lon, forms the basis, if not the whole sub- 
stance, of meat-soups, or potages gras, is sim- 
ply an aromatic and exciting liquid of agree- 
able flavor, very poor in organic alimentary 
matter, but very rich in mineral salts. 

In the long process of cooking needed to 
make bouillon the eminently nutritious prin- 
ciples of the meat have been annihilated, 
and deprived of all their qualities of organic 
nutriment. Botiillon contains, in the way of 
assimilable substances, only a small quan- 



88 DELICATE FEASTING. 

tity of grease, some mineral salts, and a cer- 
tain quantity of gelatine. 

The researches of modern chemistry have 
shown that gelatine has little or no alimen- 
tary virtues, but that it is certainly "peptoge- 
nic," that is to say, it excites the stomach to 
activity. 

The stimulating power of bouillon is chiefly 
due to creatine^ which has almost the same 
chemical composition as caffeine, and passes 
through the system without being absorbed 
at all. 

Bouillon is also rich in salts of potash. The 
chemists tell us that osinazome consists, as far 
as we can find out, of creatine, inosic acid, 
and mineral salts, lactates, phosphates, chlo- 
rures of potassium, calcium, sodium, etc. 

Bouillon restores a man immediately after 
drinking it, like tea or coffee. It is thus es- 
sentially an appetizer and a stimulant, but 
not an aliment. 

In devising a meitu and in regulating one*s 
desires, the above-mentioned points should be 
borne in mind. By the addition of all kinds 
of alimentary products, and by the various 
combinations to which purees and cr ernes lend 
themselves, the soup may be made a meal in 
itself. But in our ''Art of DeHcate Feast- 



THE THEORY OF SOUPS. 89 

ing" the theory of soups is that they should 
play the role of stimulants, of appetizers, of 
soothers of the impatient stomach. 

At a dinner of any ceremony two soups 
ought to be served, one of the liquid kind 
and the other of a creamy nature. In the 
meat-soups — the simple bouillon or the more 
quintessential consommes — the qualities which 
the gourmet demands are limpidity, succu- 
lence, and purity of aroma, unimpaired by 
violent or piquant seasoning. In the early 
stages of the feast the palate is offended by 
too-ardent appeals. The qualities required 
in purees and cremes are smoothness and 
lightness, fineness of taste, perfect material, 
amalgamation of all the elements, and the 
preservation and development of the dis- 
tinctive savors of the different constituent 
substances. 

The Englishman proverbially says, " I don't 
like slops ;" by which he expresses a gen- 
eral disapproval of soups. If his experience 
has been limited to England I agree with 
him heartily. With the exception of the 
very heavy national soups of the turtle or 
ox-tail kind, the English soups are often, if 
not generally, nothing but '^ slops." Soups 
require care, method, and intelligence on the 



90 DELICATE FEASTING. 

part of the cook who undertakes to make 
them, and also that quality which I have so 
frequently insisted upon as necessary for the 
highest achievements in the kitchen, namely, 
sentiment. 



IX. 

PRACTICAL SOUP-MAKING. 

The cookery-books contain multitudes of 
recipes for making soups. We need not re- 
peat them. In general, a cook who has the 
sentiment of his art will rarely follow pre- 
cisely any recipe given in a book ; he will 
content himself with seeking ideas in books 
and carry them out according to his skill and 
feeling. Practice, experience, and work un- 
der good masters make the best cook. In 
Paris the women cooks often take lessons in 
the kitchens of the great clubs. 

The life and soul of household cookery, 
the basis of a good, plain dinner, and of a host 
of stews, sdi.ucQSypureeSy etc., is beef bouillon. 

The first thing to learn to make is the poU 
au-feu. 

The result of the pot-au-feu must be savo- 
ry, clear, and free from grease. 

The .operations of skimming and straining 
through a sieve are most important. 



92 DELICATE FEASTING. 

In winter, bouillon may be kept for three 
days. In summer it must be made fresh ev- 
ery morning. 

Directions for composing and manipulat- 
ing the pot-au-feu and various bouillons and 
consommes will be found in " The Unrivalled 
Cook-Book" (Harper & Brothers), and in 
Mrs. Henderson's " Practical Cooking " (Har- 
per & Brothers). In the same works will be 
found many hints for preparing soups, to 
which I beg to add the following simple 
soups, which are excellent if made with good 
materials and cooked with care. 

Velvet Soup, — Cook some tapioca in good 
stock or bouillon, being careful not to make 
the liquid too thick. When ready place the 
yolks of eggs in the soup-tureen, one yolk for 
two persons. Then pour over them the tapio- 
ca, stirring the whole so that it may become 
thoroughly mixed and uniformly creamy. A 
grain of nutmeg improves this soup. 

Velvet Soup maigre. — This soup can be 
made without meat. Cook the tapioca in 
water, with a little pepper and salt. Put 
into the tureen a lump of butter and the 
yolks of eggs — two for three persons. Then 
pour over them the boiling tapioca. Stir up 
and serve. 



PRACTICAL SOUP-MAKING. 93 

I recommend to amateurs a shell-fish soup 
which I learned to make at Naples. The pres- 
ence of garlic in its composition need alarm 
only the squeamish. Garlic is a noble flavor. 

Shell-fish Soup. — Put into a stewpan some 
olive oil (half a tablespoonful for each person) 
and a little garlic finely chopped. When the 
garlic is well fried add some Tomato Sauce 
No. I (see Mrs. Henderson's " Practical Cook- 
ing," Harper & Brothers), half a tablespoon- 
ful for each person ; then put in your shell- 
fish — all sorts of small shell -fish, cockles, 
winkles, even mussels, etc., such as the mar- 
ket offers — well washed and brushed before- 
hand. Now add a spoonful of consomme for 
each person, a few cloves, and a little nut- 
meg. If your kitchen boasts no consomme 
you may use good bouillon^ strengthened with 
a little of Liebig's extract. When the soup 
has begun to tremble and throw up a few 
bubbles add a little more tomato ; let it boil 
awhile, and serve it clear with cubes of 
bread fried in oil. In order that the bread 
may still be crisp when eaten, the cubes, or 
croMonSy may be served apart, and some put 
into each plate just before the soup is ladled 
on them. 

Henri Fourth's Poule-au-Pot, — The homely 



94 DELICATE FEASTING. 

dish which Henri IV. wished each one of his 
subjects to enjoy on Sunday is not a soup, 
but it is one of those household dishes the 
making of which gives an excellent soup. 
Indeed, \.h.Q poule-au-pot constitutes a meal 
of several courses. 

Make a pot-au-feu (see ^' Unrivalled Cook- 
Book," p. 35, Harper & Brothers); only in- 
stead of beef use a piece of brisket of mut- 
ton, with the usual vegetables and savory 
herbs. Take a young hen and stuff it with 
the liver and a little fresh pork. When the 
pot-au-feu boils put in the hen and cook it 
tender. Serve the bouillon as soup ; the hen 
with salt and tomato-sauce ; bread the bris- 
ket of mutton, broil it on the gridiron, and 
serve with piquante sauce. 

Mile. Franqoise' s Poule-au-Pot , — Take three 
pounds of beef, a big hen, two cabbages, 
pease, beans, dind pot-au-feu vegetables (see 
" Unrivalled Cook-Book," p. 35), a pound of 
raw ham, a Strasbourg or a Viennese saucis- 
son, half a pound of bacon. Put the beef in 
first, without the vegetables, start the decoc- 
tion, skim, and then put in the hen. When 
half-cooked take out the hen and put in all 
the vegetables, having previously put the fol- 
lowing /"^rr^, or stuffing, into the cabbages: 



PRACTICAL SOUP-MAKING. 9$ 

Bread-crumbs, six eggs, a quarter of a 
pound of bacon, six chickens' livers, or the 
equivalent in calf's liver, ham, parsley, onions, 
a grain of garlic ; chop all this up very fine, 
stuff it into the heart of the cabbages, and 
bind the leaves up with string before putting 
them into the pot. 

Now take a stewpan and put into it some 
bacon cut up into small pieces, and then the 
half-cooked hen, and then brown the whole 
with butter. Make a brown sauce with but- 
ter and flour (see " Unrivalled Cook-Book,' 
p. 395, " Roux "), enough to just cover the 
hen in the stewpan ; add a little uncooked 
rice, a dozen boiled onions, and let it stew 
until the rice bursts. Serve the poule-au-riz 
with the addition of a little nutmeg and cay- 
enne, or with the sweet Hungarian paprika^ 
if you have any. 

The soup and the beef of this poule-au- 
pot^ served together with all the vegetables, 
constitute the ''^Petite Mannite'' that has be- 
come so popular in Parisian restaurants of 
late years. In many restaurants little earth- 
en marmites, containing one or two portions, 
are served on the tables, and in each marmite 
is a small fragment of beef, pieces of all the 
vegetables, and a portion of the clear bouillon. 



96 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Soup is really good only when it is eaten 
hot. Its warmth is an essential part of its 
excellence, and prepares the stomach for the 
important functions of the digestion of the 
succeeding and more substantial courses. 

The soup-plates should be hot, and the 
soup-tureen should be heated before the soup 
is poured into it. At a truly scientific table 
the spoons and ladles ought to be heated. 

Now, let us suppose a dinner of nine per- 
sons. If the host or hostess serves the soup, 
the last guest served will begin to use his spoon 
when the first served has finished, unless, out 
of politeness, all wait until the last is served, 
and then attack all together. If the soup is 
served from the side, and one or two servants 
pass the plates, the result will be the same. 
In both cases, during the time required to 
fill nine plates and pass them, there will be 
a loss of heat, and the beginning of the din- 
ner will be wanting in unison. The best way 
is to serve the soup in hot plates immediately 
before the dinner is announced. Then the 
guests enter the dining-room, take their seats, 
and begin to dine all at the same time and 
in perfect unison. 



X. 

ABOUT SAUCES. 
I. — Household Sauces. 

By sauces, let it be understood that we do 
not refer to the products sold in drug or 
grocery stores, and corked up in bottles, but 
to the sauces that are prepared simulta- 
neously with the dishes that they are in- 
tended to accompany and complete. 

We may divide sauces into two categories, 
household sauces and the classical sauces, 
the latter belonging to grand cookery. There 
are several household sauces, which a person 
of ordinary intelligence can learn to make. 
The first condition requisite is to have a 
kitchen supplied with stock, and with the 
usual seasonings and relishing herbs ; the 
second condition is care and practice in 
making the liaison^ or " thickening," with 
flour, butter, eggs, or cream, in their various 
combinations and developments. 

The household sauces are drawn butter, 
7 



98 DELICATE FEASTING. 

satice blanche, maitre d' hotel, beiirre noir, 
melted butter, sauce piqua7ite, sauce poi- 
vrade, sauce au vin blanc, sauce poulette, sauce 
Tartare, green and white ^nayonnaise, re- 
inoulade, Hollandaise, and others of a deriva- 
tive nature. 

Fine Hollandaise sauce and fine sauce 
blanche are both exceedingly simple in their 
composition, and both great tests of a cook's 
skill. Then why do we so rarely find them 
well made? This problem is as mysterious 
as the rarity of good dinners on this earth. 
The two chief causes of failure, or medioc- 
rity, which is just as bad, are the use of in- 
ferior materials and want of attention. Cook- 
ery, especially when we enter the domain of 
sauces, is a very delicate art, requiring the 
exercise of many qualities of delicate percep- 
tion. The cook who makes a perfect sauce 
blanche must take pleasure in his art, and 
perform every detail of the operation with 
extreme attention, vibrating over his sauce- 
pans as a painter vibrates over his picture, 
delicately sensitive to the changes of consist- 
ency which take place as the flour and butter 
become transmuted into a velvety liquid that 
has to the eye an aspect as of the surface of 
fine porcelain, close in texture, exquisite in 



ABOUT SAUCES. 99 

glaze. In the cook-books you may read how 
to mix the materials of this sauce, but no 
books will teach you how to mix those 
materials in perfection. 

Once more, in all questions concerning 
sauces, we cannot insist too much upon the 
necessity of using fine materials, and, more 
especially, butter of the finest and freshest. 
Let all the pans be scrupulously clean, and 
always use wooden spoons for the manipula- 
tion and stirring of sauces. Metal spoons 
may spoil a sauce by giving it a chill. Metal, 
also, is liable to be attacked by the acids 
used in preparing sauces. 

In addition to the many sauces for the 
preparation of which directions are given in 
easily accessible cook-books, I would call at- 
tention to the following, which are appar- 
ently less known on American tables. 

Sauce Bearnaise. — A delicate piquant sauce 
to be served with roast fillet of beef, with 
the small, marinated steaks called by the 
French tournedos, with a simple grilled steak 
of small dimensions, with roast fowl or fish, 
is the sort of warm mayonnaise called by the 
French Bearnaise. 

In the first place, get some fine butter, and 



100 DELICATE FEASTING. 

set it to melt over a gentle fire. When the 
butter is just tepid, beat into it, with a fork, 
yolks of eggs ; add aromatic herbs, finely- 
chopped, a dash of garlic, and a spoonful of 
good vinegar or lemon-juice, turning regu- 
larly with a wooden spoon until the mixture 
is of the consistency of a mayonnaise. 

Mile. Frangoise's Bearnaise Sauce. — Put 
in a stewpan a dozen shalots, a seasoning 
bouquet, a little muscade, and a teaspoonful 
of freshly ground pepper, the whole moist- 
ened with a glassful of vinegar. Boil down, 
and then strain through a sieve. Now take 
a small saucepan, and put in it a big lump 
of butter of the best quality, three yolks of 
very fresh eggs ; add two tablespoonfuls of 
the liquid already prepared as above, and 
put the whole over a very gentle fire ; turn 
it briskly with a wooden spoon, until the 
sauce gets thick, and take it off the fire very 
sharply, before it turns oily. 

Gouffe's Bearnaise. — Take five yolks of 
eggs, one ounce of butter, a pinch of salt, a 
pinch of pepper. Put the above in a pan, 
and turn it over the fire with a spoon. As 
soon as the yolks begin to set, take off the 



ABOUT SAUCES. lOI 

fire, and add another ounce of butter. Then 
stir again over the fire, and add another ounce 
of butter. Take off the fire, and add yet an- 
other ounce. Then stir again over the fire. 
Now taste to see if the seasoning is sufficient, 
and add a teaspoonful of chopped tarragon 
and a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar. 

The finest and purest Bearnaise has a dom- 
inant perfume of tarragon. Of the above three 
recipes, the most correct is Gouffe's, but the 
others are good for convenience and variety. 

A green sauce for use with all kinds of 
cold fish and meat. — Take a handful of cher- 
vil, tarragon, chives, pimpernel, and garden 
cress ; wash in cold water ; blanch by put- 
ting the herbs in hot water for a while, to de- 
prive them of rankness or bitterness of taste ; 
refresh them by plunging them in cold wa- 
ter. Now add four yolks of hard-boiled eggs 
and two anchovies, and pound the whole well 
in a mortar. Strain the result through a fine 
wire sieve, and turn the compound with ol- 
ive oil, adding from time to time drops of 
lemon-juice, as in making a mayonnaise. Turn 
the sauce always in the same direction. Sea- 
son with pepper, salt, even a little mustard, 
and a teaspoonful of anisette. 



102 DELICATE FEASTING. 

The above is a first-rate and delicate sauce, 
and requires none of the complicated bases 
employed by the grand cooks. 

Maitre d' Hotel.— T^^i^ butter of the size 
of an ^^g', chop parsley, chives, and even a 
sprig of tarragon, very finely; add freshly 
ground pepper and salt ; knead the whole 
well together, and spread it over the broiled 
meat or fish the moment before serving on a 
hot dish. 

N.B. — Never put your dish into an oven 
" to allow the butter to penetrate the meat," 
as some recommend. As soon as the meat 
is off the gridiron it wants to get to table 
with the least possible delay. 

In hot weather a few drops of lemon-juice 
may be added to the maitre d' hotel, and even 
a tinge of nutmeg. 

Chateaubriand a la Maitre d' Hotel. — As an 
instance of the use of maitre d' hotel sauce, 
here is the way to serve a Chdteaubriarid : 

The Chateaubriand is a beefsteak, a piece 
of fillet one and a half and even two inches 
thick, grilled and served with souffle pota- 
toes and maitre d' hotel sauce; that is to 
say, you put on the dish in which you intend 



ABOUT SAUCES. 103 

to serve your Chdteaubriaiid a good lump of 
sweet butter kneaded with some very finely 
chopped parsley, salt, pepper, a speck of nut- 
meg, a suspicion of chives, and a drop or two 
of lemon-juice ; melt the whole by warming 
the dish, mix, and then set your Chateaubri- 
and in the middle of the dish, all hot from 
the gridiron ; heap round it the souffle pota- 
toes, using your fingers, and send up to table 
as quickly as possible. 

A really triumphant Chateaubriand is two 
inches thick after it is cooked, and it is cooked 
rose right through ; the outside is neither 
burned nor dry ; and when you cut it with 
the knife the red juice fliows out and mixes 
with the maitre d' hotels and makes it, as it 
were, something living and animated. 

The inventor and baptizer of the Chateau- 
briand, I have been told, was Magny, and the 
name was given to it by mistake, for, accord- 
ing to Magny, it was christened, not after 
Chateaubriand, the author of the " Genie du 
Christianisme," but after a M. de Chabrillan, 
who is not otherwise famous. 

II. — The Classical Sauces. 

The classical sauces are the innumerable 
derivatives of the primary sauces known as 



104 DELICATE FEASTING. 

grande, Espag7iole, Allemande, velotcte, various 
essences, and various fumets, or flavors. All 
these primary sauces, or sauces meres y are sub- 
limated decoctions or quintessences of the 
most savory and succulent meats, whether 
of quadrupeds, fowl, or fish. In a modest 
household it is impossible to make them ; 
they require professional skill, expensive 
materials, and extensive apparatus. People 
who have princely establishments may pre- 
pare the finest sauces in their own kitch- 
ens, but the vast majority of mankind must 
depend upon the first-class restaurateurs for 
their preparation. 

The great authority Dubois - Bernard, 
speaking of this branch of his art, says : 
*' Sauces, by the care and labor they require, 
by the costly sacrifices which they necessa- 
rily involve, ought to be considered as the 
essential basis of good cookery. The gour- 
met would not think much of an elegant and 
sumptuously served dinner of which the 
sauces are wanting in that fineness of taste, 
that succulency, and that purity which are 
indispensable. 

" A man is never a great cook if he does 
not possess a perfect knowledge of sauces, 
and if he has not made a special study of the 



ABOUT SAUCES. 105 

methodical principles on which their perfec- 
tion depends. 

*' Two causes contribute to the imperfec- 
tion of sauces — defective knowledge or de- 
fective materials. An incompetent man, dis- 
posing of the finest resources, only obtains a 
mediocre and doubtful result ; but a clever 
practitioner, if he has not the necessary ma- 
terials, or if those materials are insufficient 
or of bad quality, does not attain the desired 
end. Experience, practice, knowledge, be- 
come powerless in such circumstances ; the 
cleverest cook can correct and attenuate, but 
he cannot struggle against the impossible, 
nor make prodigies out of nothing. 

" Consequently, in order to make perfect 
sauces, the cook must not only know how to 
go to work, but he must know how to make 
the sacrifices that are required. These con- 
siderations, which we cannot too strongly im- 
press both upon amphitryons and upon cooks, 
have already struck more than one observer. 
True gourmets are not accustomed to make 
parsimonious calculations ; they know that 
good cooking is incompatible with insuffi- 
cient means." 

We must, therefore, conclude that the fin- 
est sauces are inaccessible to modest purses. 



I06 DELICATE FEASTING. 

because the cost of establishing the primary 
bases is too great to be undertaken in modest 
households. The same remark applies to the 
grands boiiillo7is of flesh, fish, and fowl. The 
production of these quintessences can only 
be successfully achieved by sacrificing large 
quantities of primary and often costly mate- 
rial. 

The fine sauces referred to are the out- 
come of the high French cookery, the so- 
called cuisine classique of the first quarter of 
this century, a cuisine which could only op- 
erate with a profusion of ingredients. The 
secret of this cuisine consisted in quintessenc- 
ing the taste, whether of meat, fish, or fowl, 
by means of similar comestibles sacrificed for 
purposes of decoction or distillation, and the 
perfumes and flavors obtained by this process 
were added as condiments to the piece of 
meat, fish, or fowl served on the table. Fish, 
flesh, or fowl, heightened by the addition of 
its savory quintessence, such is the theory of 
the grand, or, as we may call them, the clas- 
sical, sauces. 

The era of fine cookery began in the reign 
of Louis XIV., when Vatel lived, and left a 
name as famous as that of Boileau, and when 
the grand seigneurs immortalized themselves 



ABOUT SAUCES. lO/ 

by combining delicate dishes. Such was the 
Marquis de Bechamel, who has given his 
name to a fundamental sauce ; such the re- 
gent who invented pain a la d' Orleans ; 
such the Marshal de Richelieu, who invented 
maho7t7taises, or mayonnaises, and attached his 
name to a score of noble recipes ; such the 
smiling and imaginative Madame de Pompa- 
dour, who created the filets de volaille a la 
Belleviie, the palais de bcenf a la Pompadour, 
and the tendons d'agneau an soleil ; such were 
the grand ladies who invented quails a la 
Mirepoix, Chartreuses a la Mauconseil, poulets 
a la Villeroy. The name of Montmorency 
has received additional lustre from a dish of 
fat pullets. The dukes of La Valliere and 
Duras, the Prince de Gu^menee, the Marquis 
de Brancas, even the princes of the royal 
family, the Comte d'Artois and the Prince 
de Cond^, did their best to cherish the sacred 
fire of culinary art ; and whatever satirical 
writers may have found to say against the 
financiers and farmers general, none of them, 
whether hungry or gorged, dared to write a 
single word against the cooks and the tables 
of these heroes of incommensurable appetite. 
However, the idea of quintessential cook- 
ery, be it remembered, is due primarily to 



I08 DELICATE FEASTING. 

the cooks of the latter part of the eighteenth 
century who provided for the deHcately vo- 
luptuous stomachs of the grand seigneurs of 
the reign of Louis XV. dishes of a subli- 
mated chemistry, or, as a writer of the time 
says, dishes which consisted only of "quint- 
essences raisonnees, degagees de toute terre- 
strHter 

This ethereal cookery, these fine suppers 
whose menus suggest the repasts of the 
princes in the ''Arabian Nights," lasted even 
during the early years of the Revolution, 
when the cooks of the ruined nobles, nota- 
bly Meot, Robert, Roze, Very, Leda, Le- 
gacque, Beauvilliers, Naudet, Edon, became 
restaurateurs and sellers of good cheer to 
all who could pay the price. Beauvilliers, 
who established his restaurant about 1782, 
was for fifteen years the most famous restau- 
rateur of Paris, and provided literally such 
delicate and sublimated dishes as those which 
had hitherto been found only on the tables of 
the king, of the nobles, and of the farmers- 
general. The great restaurateurs of modern 
Paris are nearly all direct successors of one 
or other of the famous cooks above men- 
tioned. And it is only in such establish- 
ments, much as they have degenerated, or 



ABOUT SAUCES. IO9 

at the tables of the Croesuses of the world, 
that one can hope to taste in almost satis- 
factory conditions the finest products of the 
cook's art. 

Duck a la Portugaise. — This recipe is due 
to the eminent poet, critic, historian, and 
journalist, Charles Monselet, who is the au- 
thor of divers succulent volumes on the gas- 
tronomic art, and of a famous sonnet on that 
encyclopaedic animal, the pig. 

The present dish is worthy of attention on 
account of the simplicity of the elements of 
which it is composed and of the short time 
needed to prepare it. Take either a wild 
duck or an ordinary duck ; if the latter, wring 
its neck smartly, so that there may be as lit- 
tle blood lost as possible ; dip it in hot wa- 
ter, so that you may feather it the more 
easily ; then draw and clean it. Take the 
heart, the liver, and the gizzard, and chop 
them up fine with three shalots ; pepper 
and salt liberally ; add a lump of fresh 
butter ; knead the whole well with a fork 
and stuff it into the carcase. Cut the 
duck's neck, reserving a piece of skin to 
sew up the aperture ; pack in the pope's 
nose, and sew up likewise; then roll the 



no DELICATE FEASTING. 

duck in a cloth and tie it round and round 
with a string; then plunge it into boiling 
salt water, and cook thirty-five minutes, or 
thirty minutes for a wild duck. Remove 
the cloth, and serve on a hot dish garnished 
with slices of lemon. 

Lamb or Mutton Cutlets breaded with 
Cheese. — Trim your cutlets neatly, remove 
superfluous fat, and make them dainty in 
shape. Dip each cutlet in melted butter, and 
then roll it in bread-crumbs and very finely 
grated Parmesan cheese, the crumbs and the 
cheese being in equal parts. Cook over a 
clear fire, and see that the cutlets do not get 
burned or blackened. 

" The gourmet is not a voracious eater ; 
he chews his food more than another because 
this function is a true pleasure to him, and 
because a long stay of the aliments in the 
palate is the first principle of happiness." — 
Grimod de la Reyniere. 

The real gourmet eats by candle-light be- 
cause, as Roqueplan said, ** nothing is more 
ugly than a sauce seen in sunlight." For 
this and other reasons the true gourmet 



ABOUT SAUCES. Ill 

avoids breakfast-parties, lunches, high-teas, 
pic-nics, and analogous solecisms. 

In these days of progress, science, gas- 
stoves, sophistication, and democracy, the 
gourmet's dream is to taste real meat cooked 
with real fire, and to drink wine made with 
real grapes. 



XL 

MENUS.— HORS HCEUVRES.— EN- 
TREES. 

However modest the dinner and how- 
ever few the guests, it is always desirable to 
have a menu giving the detail of the repast. 
Let there be at least one menu for every two 
guests, so that all may know what joy or dis- 
appointment is held in store for them, and so 
that each one may reserve or indulge his ap- 
petite as his tastes and his digestive interests 
may dictate. Nothing is more irritating at 
table than a surprise of a too material nature. 
For instance, it is unpleasant to find that you 
have devoted to a simple fillet of beef the at- 
tention which you would have preferred to 
reserve for quails, had you known that 
quails were in prospect. The presentation 
of the menu is a pretext for a variety of ta- 
ble bibelots, porte-menus of ornamental sil- 
ver or of porcelain, engraved cards, or cards 
decorated with etchings or water-colors. The 



HORS D'CEUVRES. II3 

designing of menu cards decorated with etch- 
ings and water-colors has been made a spec- 
ialty by several Parisian artists of talent, like 
Henri Boulet, Mesples, Gray, and Henri Gue- 
rard. 

Never forget that a menu is not merely a 
total of dishes. In an eating-house there 
will be found a list of dishes which the An- 
glo-Saxon brutally calls the " bill of fare." 
In a restaurant like the Cafe Anglais there is 
a " carte " which forms a thick volume, and 
contains the enumeration of all the dishes 
that a cook can make ; there is also a " carte 
du jour," which is the menu of the restau- 
rant, the dinner of the day, with its noble 
order of potage^ hors d'ceuvres^ relevesy en- 
treeSj roasts, entreinetSy etc. 

The theory of a menu and of the composi- 
tion of a dinner is simplicity itself ; in gener- 
al terms, it begins with an excitant, namely, 
soup, satisfies hunger gradually by fish, sav- 
ory dishes, and roasts, with which latter a 
salad comes in to excite the digestion once 
more, and prepare the way for a vegetable, 
which will be followed by the dessert. In 
composing your menu you must consult first 
of all the market, and, secondly, the number 
of guests to be served ; and, in selecting the 
8 



114 DELICATE FEASTING. 

dishes, the chief things to avoid are such 
gross errors as the repetition of the same 
meats and the same sauces, or sauces of the 
same nature. If you serve a turbot sauce 
Hollandaise you must not serve after it a 
poulet sauce supreme^ or even a blanquette de 
veau. 

The use of French words in a menu is 
not indispensable. The dehcate eater is not 
bound to know French. 

Hors d'ceuvres are either cold, or, in pro- 
fessional language, hors d'ceuvres d' office, or 
warm, that is to say, hors d'ceuvres de cui- 
sine. Formerly warm hors d'ceuvres — al- 
ways without sauces — were served side by 
side with the entrees, only on smaller dishes. 
Nowadays many warm Jiors d'oeuvres are 
reckoned as entrees or light entremets^ and 
passed round rapidly, so that they may lose 
none of their delicacy by standing on the 
table. 

At dinner cold hors d'ceuvres offer but lit- 
tle interest to the gourmet, with the excep- 
tion of the canteloupe melon and the water- 
melon, but especially the canteloupe, when 
just ripe, and with the aroma fully developed. 
Cut the melon immediately before serving, 



HORS D'CEUVRES. I15 

SO that none of the perfume may evaporate ; 
and let there be powdered sugar within the 
reach of those who wish it, and white pep- 
per for the more refined palates. The can- 
teloupe, in my opinion, should be eaten be- 
fore the soup, while the palate is absolutely 
fresh. 

As for rosy radishes, olives, anchovies, sar- 
dines, saucissoUy marinated tunny, herrings, 
or oysters, young artichokes a la poivrade, 
tongue, sprats, x:ucumbers, gherkins, pickled 
walnuts, etc., what place can such insignifi- 
cant trifles claim in the menu of a serious 
dinner? At midday breakfast it may be 
amusing and appetizing to nibble at these 
toy dishes, but, except at the family table, 
it is preferable to banish cold hors d'cetivres 
from the dinner menu. 

An exquisite cold hors d'oeuvre are fresh 
figs, served at the beginning of the repast. 
In Southern Europe you get this hors d'ceu- 
vre in perfection. Anywhere around the Bay 
of Naples a dish of figs, a slice of smoked 
ham, and a flask of red wine make a delicious 
morning meal. 

Warm hors d'cetivres, properly speaking, 
consist of small, dainty dishes, without sauces, 
such as little pasties, croustadeSy croquettes. 



Il6 DELICATE FEASTING. 

bouchces, cromesguis, timbales, orly, or fillets 
of fish, coquilles of fish or fowl, rissoles, souf- 
fies, and dehcacies served en caisses. The 
preparation of many warm hors d'ceuvres 
requires the resources of a first-rate kitchen 
and a professional cook ; for, although they 
are without sauce, nevertheless they require 
to be artistically presented. The warm hors 
d'ceuvres are served after the soup or after 
the fish ; they ought to be pretty to look at, 
and to furnish two or three delicate mouth- 
fuls. Several such hors d'oeuvres may be 
served on the same dish, which makes at 
once a handsome arrangement to the eye 
and offers greater choice to the guests, while 
at the same time it simplifies the service. 

For household cooking, however, the less 
said about warm hors d'ceuvres the better, 
for few private kitchens and few family cooks 
are equal to the task of preparing and serving 
these small dishes as they should be served. 
It is true you may get many of them from 
the neighboring pastry-cook's, but the gour- 
met distrusts dishes provided by pastry-cooks 
and caterers. Exception must, of course, be 
made for certain artists who have achieved 
fame for special things. In Paris, for in- 
stance, one of Bontoux's timbales is a dish 



ENTREES. 117 

which it is a privilege to taste, and which no 
private or professional cook can surpass. But, 
as a rule, it is well to avoid getting dishes 
from outside, and therefore I advise the am- 
phitryon to dispense as much as possible with 
warm hors d'oeuvres. Let them be reserved 
for parade dinners, where there is necessarily 
more show than there is delicate eating. 

In the highest kind of cookery we distin- 
guish two kinds of warm entrees ; simple en- 
trees^ which owe their value to the rareness or 
fineness of the component elements whose 
original character must be carefully preserved, 
and in no manner disguised by the processes 
of dressing ; and entrees travaillees^ which are 
often less remarkable than the former, so far 
as concerns their component elements, but 
more elegant and decorative in aspect and 
more varied in composition. In the mount- 
ing of entrees the cook likes to show his taste 
in ornamentation, and often he goes beyond 
the mark, and awakens the distrust of the 
gourmet by the excess of his arabesques and 
combinations of line and color. 

The more refined the gourmet is, and the 
more closely acquainted he is with the secrets 
of the culinary art, the stronger his prefer- 
ence for simple dishes, and certainly for sim- 



Il8 DELICATE FEASTING. 

plc cfitrci's as compared with the entrees tra- 
vail lees. 

With the warm entrees the real artistic 
interest of a fine dinner begins, for it is with 
the entrees that the fine sauces are served. 
Here it is useless to disguise the simple truth ; 
household cookery cannot undertake the mak- 
ing of the finest sauces, and therefore none 
but the simplest entrees can figure on the 
menu of a private individual who has not a 
first-rate kitchen and a skilled professional 
cook. Entrees may be cooked to a turn, 
tastefully mounted, and served piping hot, 
but, unless the accompanying sauce is per- 
fection, these are only a delusion and a snare. 
Let amphitryons and cooks alike meditate 
the words of the wise. 

**The science of sauces," says Dubois, 
** does not belong to everybody and any- 
body, for it can only be acquired in the 
grand school of practice. We cannot, there- 
fore, too strongly recommend cooks to study 
profoundly this part of the art. . . . Warm en- 
tries, by their very nature, are varied ; their 
number is infinite ; but the number of those 
which are suitable for a grand dinner is not 
so unlimited that they can be chosen at haz- 
ard. In a luxurious, rich, and elegant din- 



ENTRIES. 1 19 

ner there ought to be served none but choice 
entrees, carefully prepared, ornamented, gar- 
nished, representing at once, in their ensem- 
ble, wealth, skill, and competent attention. 
But, in order to achieve this difficult result, 
the cook must operate in conditions where 
abundance and resources are unlimited^ 



XII. 

ON PARATRIPTICS AND THE MAKING 
OF TEA AND COFFEE. 

Tea, coffee, and tobacco come under the 
heading to which scientific men have given 
the name of Paratriptics. The demand for 
them is based upon their power to prevent 
waste in the body, so that by their help and 
stimulus men can do more work and endure 
more privation with a smaller amount of act- 
ual food. Tea, coffee, and tobacco are not 
food, although temporarily and continuously 
they supplement it. The physiologist Mole- 
schott calls them the " savings banks" of the 
tissues. 

As in the case of most articles of food, 
very little thought has been devoted to the 
preparation of tea and coffee for the table. 
In a great country like England it is impos- 
sible to obtain really well-made coffee except 
in a few private houses, while English tea is 
generally a rank and astringent decoction in- 



ON PARATRIPTICS. 121 

stead of a delicate infusion. The traditions 
of the preparation of these beverages have 
become corrupted. 

When both tea and coffee were compara- 
tively newly introduced into Europe, the 
methods of preparing them were simple and 
logical. In his rare volume, " La Maison 
Reglee et I'Art de Diriger la Maison d'un 
Grand Seigneur et Autres, etc. Avec la 
veritable methode de faire toutes sortes 
d'essences d'eaux et de liqueurs fortes et 
rafraichissements a la mode d'ltalie " (Paris, 
1692), the author, Audiger, who was the first 
limonidier-glacier that Paris boasted, records 
two recipes for making tea and coffee which 
he learned in Italy in 1659. 

" Take a pint of water and make it boil ; 
then put in it two pinches of tea, and imme- 
diately remove it from the fire, for the tea 
must not boil ; you let it rest and infuse time 
enough to say two or three paters {^^ Vespace 
de deux ou trots pater''), and then serve it with 
powdered sugar on a porcelain dish, so that 
each one may sugar to his taste." 

" Tea," adds Audiger, " comes from the 
kingdom of Siam, and is prepared as above ; 
its properties are to settle the fumes of the 
brain and to refresh and purify the blood. 



122 DELICATE FEASTING. 

It is generally taken in the morning, to wake 
up the spirits and give appetite, and after 
meals to help digestion." 

Audiger prepares his coffee by first of all 
pounding the freshly roasted berries in a mor- 
tar or grinding them in a mill. Then he 
boils a pint of water in a coffee-pot, takes 
the pot off the fire when the water boils, puts 
in it two spoonfuls of coffee, stirs, and boils 
it up to foaming, withdrawing it from the fire 
each time the moment the foam rises. This 
operation of foaming he repeats gently ten 
or twelve times, and then precipitates the 
grounds, and clarifies the coffee by pouring 
into it a glass of cold water. 

" Coffee," remarks this excellent authority, 
*' is a grain that comes from Persia and the 
other countries of the Levant, where it is the 
natural and most common drink. When pre- 
pared as we have described, its qualities are 
that it refreshes the blood, dissipates the va- 
pors and fumes of wine, aids digestion, en- 
livens the spirits, and prevents sleepiness in 
those who have much business." 

These recipes are founded upon true prin- 
ciples. Chemical analysis shows that tea con- 
tains poisonous elements, whereas coffee is 
innocuous, and the whole of the berry good 



ON PARATRIPTICS. 1 23 

to eat. In preparing tea we must beware of 
setting free the poisonous elements which 
the leaves contain, and that is the reason 
why a decoction of tea is deleterious. In 
coffee, on the other hand, where the whole 
is eatable, a decoction is admissible, and even 
desirable ; for instance, in coffee a la Turque, 
in which the liquid is not clarified, but served 
with the grounds and all. 

The proper and only truly hygienic man- 
ner of making tea is to infuse the leaves in 
boiling water, either by pouring the water 
over the leaves or by throwing the leaves 
into the boiling water. The time necessary 
for the infusion depends on the quality and 
quantity of the tea used and on the taste of 
the drinker. Some persons advocate pour- 
ing a small quantity of boiling water over 
the leaves at first, and a moment afterwards 
putting in the remaining amount desired. 
This method may be advantageous when a 
large quantity of tea is to be made ; but for 
two or three cups I do not believe that it en- 
hances the quality of the beverage. 

The points to be insisted upon are that 
the tea should be freshly made, and not left 
to " brew " for an indefinite period. 

The teapot must be hot when the boiling 



124 DELICATE FEASTING. 

water is poured in, otherwise the temperature 
of the boiling water would experience a sud- 
den change, and the infusion would taste flat. 

Tea should be prepared daintily, in small 
quantities, and drank immediately. If it be 
needful to prepare tea in large quantities, 
the infusion should be decanted in a warmed 
earthen teapot as soon as it has acquired the 
appropriate strength. 

The object of decanting the infusion is to 
prevent the liquid from becoming impreg- 
nated with tannic acid and other acrid and 
noxious principles which the tea-leaves con- 
tain. 

Tea, as it is usually made in England and 
in America, where the process of infusion is 
allowed to continue indefinitely until the 
teapot is emptied, is a rank decoction of 
tea-leaves which can only be drank after it 
has been softened by the addition of milk or 
cream and sugar. 

The infusion of tea made as Audiger di- 
rects is a suave drink, soft to the palate, and 
tasting only of the delicate aroma of the tea- 
leaves. The time required for the infusion 
can only be determined by experience and 
individual taste. The equivalent in modern 
parlance of Audiger's '' two or three pater- 



ON PARATRIPTICS. 1 25 

nosters " would be five to ten minutes. Re- 
member that the longer the tea is infused the 
more acrid it becomes, because the leaves give 
forth more and more tannic acid. 

For tea-making and for all delicate cooking 
operations the water should be caught at the 
first boil. Nickel or silver pots are unobjec- 
tionable, provided they be kept scrupulously 
clean ; but ordinary earthen or porcelain pots 
are preferable on all accounts. 

Tea made as above described will be drank 
with or without loaf-sugar sweetening, and 
needs no softening and spoiling with milk or 
cream. 

The custom of adding cream or milk to tea 
and coffee doubtless originated in ignorance 
or bad brewing. The coffee-drinking nations 
and the tea-drinkers of the East do not know 
this custom. The Russians put in their tea 
a slice of lemon. 

If the tea or coffee be good, the addition 
of milk spoils the taste. Furthermore, the 
tannic acid which is contained both in tea 
and in coffee changes the nature of the albu- 
minous part of milk, and, so to speak, tans 
the globules of the milk, and renders them in- 
digestible. Coffee and milk and tea and milk 
are difficult to digest. Pure cream is less ob- 



126 DELICATE FEASTING. 

jectionable, because pure cream is really but- 
ter or grease, and contains very little of the 
albuminous part of milk. 

Tea and coffee both excite the nerves. 
Coffee acts more on the nerve-centre or brain ; 
tea excites the peripteral nerves. Coffee, 
therefore, produces brain excitement, while 
tea provokes rather muscular excitement. 

There are many ways of making coffee to 
suit the tastes of various nations. The Eng- 
lish like a mixture of chicory and coffee, and 
also brew a horrible black liquid with artifi- 
cial essence of coffee. In America some beat 
up an egg in the coffee to make it thick and 
rich. Various systems of filters and distillers 
have also been invented. But, after all, the 
simplest methods are the best. In order to 
make fine black coffee, you need first of all 
excellent berries, or a mixture of berries of 
different plantations. These berries ought 
to be freshly roasted and freshly ground, and 
put into the filter with all their aroma. The 
best filter is of earthenware, in two pieces, a 
pot with a spout surmounted by a perforated 
filter, in which the ground coffee is placed, 
and into which the boiling water is poured. 
Care should be taken not to have the coffee- 
berries too finely ground ; otherwise the filter 



ON PARATRIPTICS. 12^ 

will become obstructed, and the coffee get 
cold by the time it is ready to drink. In or- 
der to preserve all the aroma, it is better to 
grind the coffee and put it into the filter 
when the water has reached a boiling-point. 
Then begin by pouring the water into the 
filter slowly, and only a little quantity at a 
time. Do not make the fatal mistake of fill- 
ing up the filter and waiting until the water 
has passed through before you add any more ; 
in this case you will have not only cold cof- 
fee, but poor coffee. As soon as you have 
poured the first small quantity into the filter, 
replace the water over the fire, and always 
have it at boiling-point when you pour it 
into the filter ; thus, by gradually pouring a 
very small amount of boiling water at a time, 
it will pass through the ground coffee just 
quickly enough to extract all the strength 
and preserve all its heat. There are persons 
who first filter the coffee-grounds left over 
from the previous meal, and then pass this 
liquid, after bringing it to a boilings- point, 
over the freshly ground berries ; but this 
method is not to be recommended, as it pro- 
duces a strong, muddy mixture, without aro- 
ma. If you are a lover of very strong cof- 
fee, the best way to obtain it is to increase 



128 DELICATE FEASTING. 

the amount of ground berries in the filter. 
For making moderately strong black coffee, 
a tablespoonful of ground coffee per cup is 
sufficient. 

The only other way of making coffee wor- 
thy of our notice is that employed by the 
Turks. Byron's friend Trelawney has de- 
scribed the process in his " Adventures of a 
Younger Son," where he says that good Mus- 
sulmans can alone make good coffee ; for, be- 
ing interdicted from the use of ardent spirits, 
their palate is more exquisite and their relish 
greater. " Thus it is," writes Trelawney. 
" A bright charcoal fire was burning in a 
small stove. Kamalia first took for four 
persons four handfuls of the small, pale Mo- 
cha berry, little bigger than barley. These 
had been carefully picked and cleaned. She 
put them into an iron vessel, where, with ad- 
mirable quickness and dexterity, they were 
roasted till their color was somewhat dark- 
ened and the moisture not exhaled. The 
over-roasted ones were picked out, and the 
remainder, while very hot, put into a large 
wooden mortar, where they were instantly 
pounded by another woman. This done, 
Kamalia passed the powder through a cam- 
el's-hair cloth, and then repassed it through 



ON PARATRIPTICS. 1 29 

a finer cloth. Meanwhile a coffee-pot, con- 
taining exactly four cups of water, was boil- 
ing. This was taken off, one cup of water 
poured out, and three cups full of the pow- 
der, after she had ascertained its impalpabil- 
ity between her finger and thumb, were stirred 
in with a stick of cinnamon. When replaced 
on the fire,, on the point of over-boiling it was 
taken off, the heel of the pot struck against 
the hob, and again put on the fire ; this was 
repeated five or six times. I forgot to men- 
tion she added a very minute piece of mace, 
not enough to make its flavor distinguishable ; 
and that the coffee-pot must be of tin, and un- 
covered, or it cannot form a thick cream on 
the surface, which it ought to do. After it 
was taken for the last time from the fire the 
cup of water which had been poured from it 
was returned. It v/as then carried into the 
room, without being disturbed, and instantly 
pgured into the cups, where it retained its 
rich cream at the top. Thus made its fra- 
grance filled the room, and nothing could be 
more delicious to the palate. So far from its 
being a long and tedious process, as it may 
appear in narrating, old Kamalia allowed 
herself only two minutes for each person ; 
so that from the time of her leaving the 

9 



130 DELICATE FEASTING. 

room to her return no more than eight min- 
utes had elapsed." 

For making coffee in the Turkish fashion 
the berries require to be ground to a very 
fine powder. The Turks have small hand- 
mills for private use, but in the cafes the ber- 
ries are crushed in big iron mortars with long 
pestles, whose ringing sound is one of the 
characteristic noises of the streets of Stam- 
boul. Turkish mills and the dainty little tin 
pans containing one, two, three, or four cups 
are now easily obtainable in Western shops, 
and, with the aid of a spirit-lamp, Turkish 
coffee may be prepared on the table more 
expeditiously and with less trouble than black 
coffee made by the Western filter system. 
The refinements mentioned by Trelawney 
of stirring the coffee with a cinnamon-stick, 
and of adding a minute piece of mace, are 
not very commendable. The ideal in mak- 
ing tea and coffee, as in all delicate cookery, 
is to develop the taste peculiar to each article 
of food or drink. If the flavor of the coffee 
is fine in itself, it will not gain anything by 
the added suggestion of a spicy flavor. 

Black coffee needs to be served piping hot, 
and the cups and even the spoons should be 
heated before the coffee is poured out. Noth- 



ON PARATRIPTICS. 131 

ing is more saddening after dinner than tepid 
coffee. 

For sweetening both tea and coffee loaf- 
sugar is to be used. There is no objection 
against powdered sugar, provided it be free 
from adulteration. For sweetening cold cof- 
fee, which is sometimes a grateful beverage 
in hot weather, syrup of gum is more con- 
venient than any form of sugar. 

Finally, whatever method you employ to 
make your tea or coffee, start with good ma- 
terials, manipulate them delicately and with 
care in every detail. 



XIII. 

THE DINING-ROOM AND ITS 
DECORATION 

In these days of " decorative art," it is 
necessary to say something about the aspect 
of a dining-room and its ornamentation. 
Doubtless the best ornament for a dining- 
room is a well-cooked dinner, but that dinner 
will taste all the better in a room that is ra- 
tionally furnished, agreeably decorated, and 
heated just to the right point. 

As regards the furnishing and decoration, 
much must be left to individual taste ; at the 
same time there is reason to protest against 
two influences which are equally irrational, 
the one French, and the other English, and 
both resulting in making a dining-room a 
sombre and severe place. There is no reason 
why the darker shades of green, brown, and 
red, should be reserved for dining-rooms ; I 
have eaten delightfully in a room where the 
panelling was painted pale lilac, picked out 
with blue and salmon red ; and against this 



THE DINING-ROOM. 1 33 

background the ladies, with fresh flowers in 
their hair, stood out Hke a spring meadow 
against a vernal sky. It is not forbidden to 
make a dining-room gay in tone. The fur- 
niture is not necessarily of dark mahogany 
or oak. The Henri II. dining-room, now so 
fashionable, with its heavy curtains and por- 
tieres ^ its monumental fire-places, mantels, 
and andirons, and its walls decked out with 
arms, bibelots, tapestries, and what not, is the 
most unreasonable of all dining-rooms. All 
tapestry, portieres, hangings, bibelots, and 
other such things are objectionable, because 
they absorb the odors given forth by the 
drinks and viands. The display of armor on 
the walls is a silly affectation. There is no 
excuse whatever for converting a dining-room 
into a museum, and for this reason one does 
not wish to see the walls hung over with 
plates and dishes. The proper place for 
plates and dishes when not in use is in a 
cupboard, or on the shelves of a drawer. All 
archaic decoration is peculiarly out of place 
in a dining-room, where the principal object, 
the table, when laid out for breakfast or for 
dinner, is radically and absolutely modern. 
This room seems to me peculiarly worthy of 
the attention of our modern decorative art- 



134 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ists, who might deliver us from the heavy 
and pompous splendor of the English, and 
of the silly feudalism and baronialism of the 
French Henri II. room, if they would only 
consent to neglect fashion, and apply their 
reasoning powers to the solution of the 
problem. 

A host may show his personality and his 
taste in the arrangement of his dining-room 
as Tnuch as in his dress, or in his conversa- 
tion, and yet nowhere do we see so little 
originality. People are singularly conserva- 
tive in all that concerns the art of entertain- 
ing. The finest dinners nowadays are terri^ 
bly monotonous ; over and over again the 
same menu is served in the same way and 
in the same conditions of milieu and decora- 
tion. The dining-room need not be a dark- 
toned, impersonal place of immutable aspect. 
That correct gentleman, Comte Mole, when 
he received one of his friends of the diplo- 
matic corps, would place in his salle a manger 
plants, flowers, and pictures which reminded 
his guest of his fatherland. Lord Lonsdale 
carried his refinement so far as to have a 
series of dining-rooms with hangings, furni- 
ture, and porcelain appropriate in tone to the 
color of the hair and the kind of beauty of 



THE DINING-ROOM. 1 35 



the lady he was feting. \ On a less grandiose 
scale, I know an amiable hostess in London 
whose dining-room walls are covered with a 
rose-colored Louis XVL striped silk, and who 
has the two maids who serve at table dressed 
in colors and patterns that harmonize with 
the walls of the room. 

In a dining-room the aim of the decorator 
should be simplicity and gayety of aspect ; 
and the materials which he may best use are 
wainscoting, or lainbris, of the styles of Louis 
XIIL, XIV., XV., and XVL, or of modern de- 
sign, if he can find a designer, stucco, lacquered 
woodwork, panelling filled in with stamped 
leather, or decorative painting, neo-Greek 
decoration, simple panelling, either of natural 
wood or of wood painted in plain colors, or, 
finally, simple wall-paper, only let it be re- 
membered that the paper need not be of 
dark hue. 

Madame de Pompadour's dining-room at 
Bellevue was decorated with hunting and 
fishing scenes by Oudry, and the attributes 
of these sports were repeated on the wood- 
work carved by Verbreck. 

In a little novelette by Bastide, called '* La 
Petite Maison," we find a curious contempo- 
rary description of a dining-room in one of 



136 DELICATE FEASTING. 

those elegant villas where the rich French- 
men of the eighteenth century indulged their 
tastes for refinement and luxury of all kinds. 
" The walls," we read, " are covered with stucco 
of various colors, executed by the celebrated 
Clerici. The compartments, or panels, con- 
tain bass-reliefs of stucco, modelled by the fam- 
ous Falconet, who has represented the fetes 
of Comus and of Bacchus. The trophies 
which adorn the pilasters of the decoration 
are by Vass6, and represent hunting, fishing, 
the pleasures of the table, those of love, etc. ; 
and from each of these trophies, twelve in 
number, springs a candelabrum, or torchere^ 
with six branches." I recommend architects 
and amateurs to read the great architect 
Blondel's two volumes on " La Distribution 
des Maisonsde Plaisance" (Paris, 1737), where 
they will see how great was the refinement 
of the French in the eighteenth century, and, 
above all, how delicate the tonalities of lilac, 
blue, rose, and bright grays which they pre- 
ferred to give to the walls of their dwellings. 
At the end of the eighteenth century the 
influence of the discovery of Pompeii and 
Herculaneum naturally made itself felt, and 
the dining-rooms of the Directory and of the 
First Empire were arranged in the antique 



THE DINING-ROOM. 1 37 

fashion with stucco or marble, adorned with 
columns and pilasters, and friezes, either with 
bare walls or with walls decorated with 
stucco bass-reliefs, or Pompeian arabesques. 
The neo-Greek or Pompeian style still has its 
advocates. During the second empire. Prince 
Napoleon had a Pompeian palace built in 
the Avenue Montaigne, at Paris, from de- 
signs by M. Alfred Normand. In this palace, 
which is in reality only a very modest villa, 
the dining-room is lighted by a large window 
divided into three, by two pilasters ; the 
ceiling is panelled in caissons, and the walls 
are panelled in red, blue, and yellow, which 
colors serve as the ground for the most deli- 
cate ornamentation that the Pompeian style 
created — slender columns, trellises, long fila- 
ments of plants, light garlands, blond or ver- 
meil fruits, bows of ribbon, birds, cups, mu- 
sical instruments, chhneres^ intermingled dis- 
creetly with ears of corn, fish, and game, 
which reveal the intention of the room 
without sating the eyes before sating the 
stomach, as is often the result of our modern 
game and fruit pieces, fitter to serve as a 
sign for a butcher's shop than as a vision 
to be placed before the eyes of delicate 
gourmets. 



138 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Some of the dining-rooms of the Directory- 
epoch which still remain, or of which we have 
drawings, must have been very pleasant to 
the eye. A typical house of that period 
was one designed by the architect and deco- 
rator Bellanger, for a celebrity of the epoch, 
Mademoiselle Dervieux. The basis of the 
decoration of her dining-room was gray, 
white, and yellow stucco ; the over-doors were 
bass-reliefs of white stucco on Wedgewood- 
blue ground, the doors of unpolished ma- 
hogany with medallions and panels in yellow 
wood, framed with silver fillets and painted 
with arabesques and subjects, the pilasters 
of Sienna yellow covered with silver ara- 
besques. Some elaborate specimens of this 
style of decoration may be seen in several of 
the Russian imperial palaces. I do not abso- 
lutely recommend the Directory style for 
imitation, but there are valuable hints to be 
obtained from the tender-colored and often 
tasteful arrangements of that period. In 
England, the painter Whistler has contrib- 
uted his mite of influence towards emanci- 
pating people from the traditional dinginess 
and sombre tones of dining-room furniture 
and decoration. The painter's own dining- 
room is canary yellow, with blue and white 



THE DINING-ROOM. 139 

china as a decoration. A famous dining-room, 
designed and painted by Whistler, for Mr. 
Leyland's house, is pale blue and pale gold, 
covered with arabesques that suggest the 
motif of peacocks and their feathers. The 
only decoration of this room is composed of 
decorative peacock panels on the shutters of 
the windows, and on the walls a collection 
of blue-and-white Chinese porcelain arranged 
on gilt shelves. 



XIV. 

ON DINING-TABLES. 

How true is that maxim of Paulus ^mili- 
us, when he was to entertain the Roman peo- 
ple, after his glorious expedition into Greece : 
" There is equal skill required to bring an 
army into the field and to set forth a mag- 
nificent entertainment, for the object in the 
first case is to annoy your enemy as far as 
possible, and in the second to give pleasure 
to your friend." In the art of feasting, Vart 
des festins, as the gastronomic writers of the 
eighteenth century call it, the arrangement of 
the table is as important as the preparation of 
the food itself, for a good dinner badly served 
is a good dinner spoiled. 

The first object that requires our attention 
in the dining-room is the table. It is the 
table that ought to regulate everything, the 
table itself being regulated by the normal stat- 
ure of the people who are to use it. Whether 
round, rectangular, or rectangular with round 



ON DINING-TABLES. 14I 

ends, telescope table or table with inserted 
leaves, its size should be based on the fact 
that each person should be allowed 30 inches 
of space in width, and, in order to insure free 
circulation and perfect waiting, a space of six 
feet is demanded between the wall and the 
backs of the diners' chairs. The proportions 
to be observed in making the table are that 
the length may exceed the breadth by one 
quarter, one third, one half, and very excep- 
tionally by three quarters for a large company. 
Outside of these proportions the equilibrium 
is destroyed and the service loses its fine order 
and unity ; we then fall into those long tables 
which are a series of tables juxtaposed — the 
unsociable tables of public banquets and mo- 
nastic refectories. The above proportions and 
measures have been fixed by the experience 
of those who are most interested in a dinner, 
namely, those who eat it and those who serve 
it, and it is in accordance with them that the 
dining-room ought to be constructed, for the 
object of the dining-room is to contain the 
dining-table and its accessories, that is to say, 
chairs, dumb-waiters, side tables, and dressers 
strictly necessary for the service. These meas- 
ures, ample as they are, do not imply an im- 
mense room, for, be it remembered, from the 



142 DELICATE FEASTING. 

remotest antiquity the number of guests that 
can be admitted to an artistic dinner-table 
ought not to exceed that of the Muses, nor to 
be fewer than that of the Graces. The din- 
ing-room — the shape of which should be sug- 
gested by the shape of the table — needs two 
doors, one communicating with a drawing- 
room, and one with a butler's pantry, or indi- 
rectly with the kitchen. 

Generally the modern dining -table errs 
on the side of too great solidity. The first 
quality of a table obviously is that it should 
be firm on its legs, but there is no reason 
for exaggerating its strength into clumsiness. 
Furthermore, the dining-table of richly carved 
oak, walnut, rosewood, or mahogany is a use- 
less luxury ; the ornamentation is misplaced 
and often fatal to knees ; the richness of the 
material itself is lost, inasmuch as the table is 
always covered with a cloth. A table, accord- 
ing to Dr. Johnson, is '' a horizontal surface 
raised above the ground and used for meals 
and other purposes." Roubo, in his treatise 
on joinery and cabinet-making, written in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century (1770), 
says that tables are all composed of a top and 
of one or more feet which are fixed or mov- 
able or folding. Of all the furniture ever 



ON DINING-TABLES. 1 43 

made, the French furniture of the eighteenth 
century seems to me the most rational, the 
most convenient, and the most tasteful. Of 
all the cookery ever achieved, that of the time 
of the Regent was probably the most exquis- 
ite. A contemporary of the petite soiipers 
of the eighteenth century, Grimm, the author 
of the famous " Correspondance Litteraire," 
questions very much whether *'the sumptu- 
ousness of the Roman tables could enter into 
any comparison with the studied refinement 
of the French." We may therefore ask with 
curiosity what kinds of tables were used, and 
we shall find in Roubo's "Art du Menuisier 
Ebeniste" the following excellent theoretical 
remarks on the subject : 

" Eating-tables," says Roubo, " are not sus- 
ceptible of any decoration ; they consist sim- 
ply of several planks of pine or some other 
light wood joined together with tongue and 
groove, and bound with oak at the ends. 
These tables, or rather these table-tops, are 
almost all of one shape, that is to say, a par- 
allelogram larger or smaller according to the 
number of covers. Formerly eating-tables 
were made round or oval, but at present these 
forms are little used. The size of tables is 
determined, as I have just said, by the num- 



144 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ber of guests, to each of whom ought to be 
attributed at least two feet of room, or, bet- 
ter still, three feet, especially when there are 
many ladies at a meal, because their dresses 
take up much more room than those of men." 

Roubo calculates his small, medium, and 
large tables on the basis of two feet for each 
cover, and his largest table for ten persons is 
six by five feet. When a larger number of 
guests had to be accommodated, recourse was 
had to leaves or flaps and to composite or 
juxtaposed tables. Grand feasts were always 
served on composite tables. Roubo thus 
sums up the practices of the eighteenth cen- 
tury in the matter of tables : 

" Large tables are those which can not only 
accommodate a large number of guests, but 
also the middle of which is large enough to 
hold a surtout de decoration^ either of flowers, 
sweetmeats, etc., which, with the number of 
covers given, determines precisely the size of 
these tables, on the principle that there should 
be two feet of room around the dorinant, or 
plateau which forms the basis of the decora- 
tive centre-piece. As these tables are ordina- 
rily very large, they are made up of a num- 
ber of tables joined together with tongue and 
groove and held by clamps placed at inter- 



ON DINING-TABLES. 145 

vals. These tables are placed as solidly as 
possible on trestles in such a manner that the 
trestles may be about a foot inside from the 
edge of the table so as not to inconvenience 
those who are seated around. 

^' Besides the large tables I have just men- 
tioned," continues Roubo, *' there are also 
hollow tables, commonly termed horse-shoe 
tables, either with the upper end round or 
forming simply an elbow. Both these tables 
are very convenient, inasmuch as the service 
can be performed from the inside without 
interfering with those who are seated round. 
Their only disadvantage is that they can only 
receive artificial surtouts of moderate size, 
which is in my opinion no great misfortune, 
for in point of fact the enormous surtouts 
with which the tables of the great are loaded 
serve only to render the waiting more diffi- 
cult and even inconvenient, and to obstruct 
the view of all the guests, who can, only with 
difficulty and manoeuvring, see the other side 
of the table." The breadth of Roubo's horse- 
shoe table is three feet, and the height of all 
his eating-tables twenty-seven to twenty-eight 
inches. 

A rare volume called *' Le Cannameliste 
Francais," pubhshed at Nancy in 1761 by 
10 



146 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Gilliers, who was head butler, or chef d' office, 
and distiller to King Stanislas, may be con- 
sulted with profit by those who are curious 
as to the service and aspect of eighteenth- 
century tables. It is a big volume, where, 
in the midst of charming copper-plate en- 
gravings representing desserts laid out in toy- 
gardens, with grass-plots of chenille, and walks 
of nonpareille to imitate gravel, you find 
recipes for pomegranate jam, syrup of jas- 
mine, candy of violets, roses, and jonquils 
— odorous and ethereal quintessences which 
remind one of the sweetmeats of a feast in 
the "Arabian Nights." Gilliers's book is a 
complete manual of the art of delicate feast- 
ing according to the received ideas of the 
time of Louis XV. About this matter of 
tables, Gilliers has the most delightfully fan- 
tastic notions. The classification of tables 
into round, square, oblong, and horse -shoe 
forms does not satisfy him ; he maintains 
that a table may have any form that we 
please to give to it, and in a cut which we here 
reproduce he shows us a table of most amus- 
ing and capricious contour, suggestive of the 
influence of contemporary rocaille forms. 
This table is built up by means of composite 
tops, keyed on treadles. In his book, Gilliers 



ON DINING-TABLES. 



147 




gives a dozen plans 
of tables of capri- 
cious arabesque and 
rocaille forms, ac- 
companied by mi- 
nute directions for 
drawing the figures 
and sawing them 
out of deal boards. 
To make such ta- 
bles is very easy 
and simple, and I 
have no doubt that 
if some lady would 
take the trouble to 
give a grand feast 
at a table such as 
the one figured in 
our cut, she would 
not regret her ele- 
gant initiative. 

It seems to me 
that in this matter 
of dining-tables we 
might with ad- 
vantage struggle 
against tradition 
and devote just a 



148 DELICATE FEASTING. 

little reasoning to the question. Let us take, 
for instance, the large round tables used in 
many of the New York club-houses. These 
tables are monuments ; their diameter enor- 
mous; their centre quite beyond the reach of 
those who are seated around the periphery ; 
the ^^ horizontal surface raised above the 
ground" is greater than is needed, and much 
of it remains waste to be encumbered only 
by massive and useless ornaments, plate, or 
what not. And yet there are doubtless many 
who imagine that these round tables are 
similar in all essentials to those which the 
Arthurian legend and the romances of chiv- 
alry have rendered famous. This is prob- 
ably a mistake ; the round tables of chivalry 
were, I imagine, hollow or broken circles like 
the table shown in the accompanying cut 
taken from an illuminated manuscript of the 
fourteenth century. With the exception of 
the fixed seats or stalls, which seem difficult 
of access, this round table is perfectly con- 
venient ; it is no wider than is necessary ; it 
is covered with a fair and beautifully em- 
broidered cloth, and it is most convenient 
for the service, which is performed by the 
little pages whom we see in the centre, dis- 
creetly attentive to the wants of the quaint 



ON DINING-TABLES, 



149 



old magnates who are seen in the act of 
dining. 

With our modern round or square tables 




ROUND TABLE OF FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 



the service is always inconvenient. What 
can be more disagreeable than the ordinary 
modern system of service executed by wait- 
ers who approach the diner treacherously 



I50 DELICATE FEASTING. 

from behind, pass the dish over his left 
shoulder, and occasionally pour a few drops 
of gravy over his coat-sleeve ? Curiously 
enough, this question of serving feasts has 
not occupied the attention of many writers. 
Books on the duties of the maitre d' hotel are 
rare, and the matter has only been touched 
upon incidentally in the regular treatises on 
the culinary art, which were themselves rare 
until modern times ; for, as the gastronomic 
poet, Dr. William King, has remarked, 

" Tho' cooks are often men of pregnant wit, 
Thro' niceness of their subject few have writ." 

In the Middle Ages, which were far more 
refined in manner than most people believe, 
the general disposition of the dining-table 
was borrowed from the usage of the abbeys 
and convents, and it was precisely the dis- 
position still maintained in the English uni- 
versities at the present day. The principal 
table was laid on a raised platform or floor 
at the upper end of the dining-hall, and re- 
ceived the name of '' high table," a term still 
in use at Oxford and Cambridge. The guests 
sat on one side of the table only ; the place 
of honor was in the centre ; and the principal 
personage sat under a canopy or cloth of state, 



ON DINING-TABLES. 151 

hung up for the occasion, or under a perma- 
nent panelled canopy curving outwards. 

At Florence, in the time of the Renais- 
sance, the guests appear to have sat on one 
side of the table and at the ends. Such is 
the arrangement in Pinturrichio's pictures of 
the Story of Griselidis now in the National 
Gallery at London. One of these pictures 
represents a feast served under a portico built 
in a garden. The guests are seated along 
one side and at the ends of a long and nar- 
row table. The waiters carry long napkins 
thrown over their shoulders or streaming in 
the wind like scarfs as they walk. In the 
collection of Mr. Leyland, at London, there 
is a beautiful picture by Sandro Botticelli 
representing a feast served in a lovely green 
meadow under a portico having five pillars 
on each side. In the background, at a short 
distance off, is a sort of triumphal arch, and 
beyond it you see a landscape and a lake 
with boats and islands crowned with castles. 
In the foreground is a dresser richly draped 
with precious stuffs and laden with massive 
gold plate and parade dishes and ewers. 
There are two tables, arranged parallel and 
in perspective, and the guests are seated on 
one side only, at one table the v/omen, and 



152 DELICATE FEASTING. 

at the other the men, the former against a 
background of garlands of verdure and flow- 
ers stretched from pillar to pillar behind the 
bench on which they are seated. Remark 
this separation of the women from the men, 
and read an account of a bachelor's supper- 
party at Rome, given by Benvenuto Cellini, 
in his fascinating autobiography. *' When 
the banquet was served and ready, and we 
were going to sit down to table, Giulio asked 
leave to be allowed to place us. This being 
granted, he took the women by the hand, 
and arranged them all upon the inner side, 
with my fair in the centre ; then he placed 
all the men on the outside, and me in the 
middle. As a background to the women 
there was spread an espalier of natural jas- 
mines in full beauty, which set off their charms 
to such great advantage that words would 
fail to describe the effect." (J. A. Symonds's 
translation.) 

Both in Pinturrichio's and Botticelli's pict- 
ures, the costume, the manner of carrying 
the dishes, and the stately rhythmic walk of 
the waiters is particularly noticeable, and on 
this point I would refer the curious to Fran- 
cesco Colonna's " Hypnerotomachia," first 
published in 1499, where there is a most minute 



ON DINING-TABLES. I 53 

account of a feast given in the palace of 
Queen Elentherilide. At this feast, where, 
with the exception of Poliphilo, only the 
queen and her maidens are present, the guests 
are seated on one side of the tables only, ex- 
actly as we see in Botticelli's picture above 
noted on benches placed along the walls. 
The manner of carrying the dishes and nap- 
kins is described exactly, and corresponds in 
all points with the attitudes and bearing of 
the waiters in the two pictures in question. 
The sumptuousness of this feast surpasses 
everything that has ever been seen or imag- 
ined. I have space only to note one or two 
details. Each guest was waited upon by 
three maidens dressed in magnificent gar- 
ments of the same color as the table-cloth ; 
with each course, the table-cloth and the 
flowers* were changed, and the attendant 
maidens' garments likewise ; the table-cloths 
were of silk or satin, and of sea-green, rose, 
amethyst, and other colors, successively. 

The art and the literature of the past 
would furnish many other proofs of the re- 
finement of our ancestors in their table-ser- 
vice, but perhaps the above-mentioned in- 
stances will suffice to suggest to some hosts 
the idea of rebelling against too rigid tradi- 



154 DELICATE FEASTING. 

tlons. Our modern system of alternating 
men and women at table, side by side, is an 
ancient one also, but the plan noticed by 
Benvenuto Cellini might be tried occasion- 
ally, and it would be a very refined fancy to 
arrange a background especially to set off 
the beauty of a bevy of fair ladies arranged 
at table in a group, for their own pleasure, 
of course, but also for the delectation of the 
eyes of the men. As regards the guests 
being seated on one side of the table only, 
and being served from the , front and not 
from the back, I consider this reform, or 
rather this return to the practices of the 
past, to be very desirable. 

The necessity of having waiters at table 
is regrettable. Male waiters are often, if 
not generally, dreadful phenomena. There 
is nothing more shocking to the gourmet 
than the vision of the waiter's abominable 
thumb grasping the rim of a plate and 
threatening at every moment to come into 
contact with the soup or the meat that he 
is passing. Even when this thumb is veiled 
in a spotless white cotton glove, it still re- 
mains objectionable ; on this point, I agree 
with the painter W. P. Frith, who says in 
one chapter of his ''Reminiscences:" '' I think 



ON DINING-TABLES. 1 55 

if I were ever so rich, I should as much as 
possible avoid men-servants ; not that I have 
a word to say against a highly respectable 
portion of the community, but being, like 
the Vicar of Wakefield, an admirer of happy 
faces, I am also an admirer of pretty ones, 
only they must be of. the female order." 

The delicate gourmets of the eighteenth 
century devoted much ingenuity to solving 
the problem of waiting at table, and several 
of them invented costly apparatus for raising 
and lowering the table through the floor al- 
ready served. Grimod de la Reyniere was the 
sworn enemy of servants, and the dream of 
his life was to discover some machine to 
replace those human machines which have 
always too many eyes and too many ears, 
and render all expansiveness impossible or 
imprudent. In 1728 the Margravine of 
Bayreuth speaks in her curious memoirs of 
a table de confiance which was worked by 
means of pulleys. " No servants are needed," 
she says ; " they are replaced by drums 
placed at the side of the guests, who write 
what they want on a tablet ; the drums de- 
scend into the kitchen, and ascend again 
with the objects required." Forty years later, 
Loriot, an ingenious man who had discovered 



156 DELICATE FEASTING. 

a means of fixing pastel, invented for Marie 
Antoinette's service, at Trianon, a table far 
superior to the Margravine's system of lifts. 
It was a table which rose through the floor, 
all served, and accompanied by four little 
tables, or dumb-waiters, on which were placed 
the various utensils necessary. A similar ar- 
rangement is described in Bastide's '' La Pe- 
tite Maison," already mentioned. 



XV. 
ON TABLE-SERVICE. 

" What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, 
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise 
To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice 
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air ? 
He who of those delights can judge, and spare 
To interpose them oft is not unwise." 

John Milton. 

The desirable thing, in the words of the 
poet, is a " neat repast." There is not only 
an art of preparing a delicate feast, but an 
art of eating one, and this latter art is not so 
advanced as it might be. Method in eating 
Is all-important, and the only method is the 
English, for the EngHsh eat with ease and 
without embarrassing their neighbors. Du- 
bois, who had long experience at the court of 
Berhn, says, in his " Cuisine de Tous les Pays," 
that it seems difficult and embarrassing to 
eat according to any method except the Eng- 
lish, but as he probably had seen many Ger- 
mans eating differently, he proceeds to ex- 



158 DELICATE FEASTING. 

pound the English method, the whole theory 
and practice of which consists in using the 
fork always with the left hand and the knife 
and spoon with the right. The fork is to be 
held with the index finger stretched out so 
as to maintain it in an almost horizontal 
position. Nothing seems clumsier than to 
grip the fork with clenched fist and to hold 
it perpendicular as the Germans often do. 
Nothing is less " English you know " than to 
convey food to the mouth with the knife or 
to touch fish with a knife. When you are 
not using your knife and fork, lay them on 
your plate with the handle of the one turned 
to the right and the handle of the other 
turned to the left, ready to be taken up at 
once. The knife and fork should be laid on 
the plate, the one crossing the other, only 
when you have finished eating altogether. 
A case when the fork may be used with the 
right hand is in eating fish. These points 
seem so simple and elementary that it would 
appear useless to put them down in writing, 
and yet a little experience of tables d'hote, 
particularly on the European continent, will 
show that there are still many well-dressed 
people in this world who eat like savages and 
not at all according to the English method. 



ON TABLE-SERVICE. I 59 

At a table d'hote in Hanover I remember once 
sitting beside a German lady, a banker's wife, 
who borrowed my scarf-pin to pick her teeth 
with after dinner. This was not only a proof 
of bad manners, but also of hygienic impru- 
dence, because a metal toothpick spoils the 
enamel of the teeth. For toothpicking pur- 
poses a lentisk stick is best, though a quill is 
not harmful, as Martial says in one of his 
epigrams : 

" Lentiscum melius : sed si tibi frondea cuspis 
Defuerit, dentes, penna, levare potes." 

In order to be comfortably seated at table 
the chair must be neither too high nor too 
low, and above all it should not be so heavy 
that it needs an effort to move it an inch, 
nor should it be rough with carving that 
sticks into your shoulders when you lean 
back, or catches and tears the dresses of the 
women. These details also may seem un- 
worthy of being written down, but experi- 
ence has hitherto revealed to me very few 
reasonably constructed dining-room chairs. A 
wealthy New York banker recently had made 
in Europe some massive bronze dining-room 
chairs. His example is not to be commended. 

The table-cloth should be laid, not directly 



l6o DELICATE FEASTING. 

on the table, but over a thick cotton blanket. 
The cloth itself should be spotlessly clean, 
and if this condition exist much will be par- 
doned ; it may be pure white linen or dam- 
ask, or it may have a colored pattern woven 
or embroidered along the edges. The use of 
color in the pattern of table linen is by no 
means novel. In the miniatures of the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries the table-cloths 
and the long, narrow dresser cloths are con- 
stantly represented with rose or blue stripes 
and borders. Some luxurious table-cloths 
nowadays are not only richly embroidered, 
but also adorned with inserted bands of lace, 
which give you the sensation of dining off 
a petticoat. Such excess is to be avoided. 
The starching and stiffening of table linen 
as practised in England is not to be recom- 
mended. The ideal table-cloth is smooth and 
fair to the eye ; it has no obtrusive glaze ; it 
is soft to the touch, and its folds are not hard 
or rigid. 

As regards the nature and shape of the 
tables, we have already suggested the advis- 
ableness of rebelling against the tyranny both 
of tradition and of the furniture -makers of 
Grand Rapids (Mich.) and elsewhere. There 
are hints for hostesses to be found in Paul 



ON TABLE SERVICE. l6l 

Veronese's '^ Noces de Cana," and in Lippo 
Lippi's " Herod's Feast." Lippi's fresco in 
the cathedral of Prato might be reproduced 
easily in a Newport villa as a gastronomic 
tableau vivant. 

A most important article absolutely nec- 
essary for happiness at table is the napkin. 
The napkin should be soft and ample, and 
absolutely devoid of glaze or starch. The 
English have a detestable habit of stiffening 
table-napkins so that they are utterly inde- 
tergent and therefore useless. In all the de- 
tails of table-service the chief consideration 
is appropriateness to the end. Napkins are 
used to wipe the lips and the fingers, to cover 
the lap, and even to protect the bust. They 
should be fair pieces of linen of generous 
dimensions, say thirty- four by twenty -five 
inches. May Comus preserve us from the pal- 
try six-by-nine-inch rag which some Anglo- 
Saxons would fain foist upon us as napkins. 

The napkin will of course match the cloth, 
but if it is embroidered or ornamented in any 
way, let this decoration in no way interfere 
with its usefulness, and, above all things, let 
there be no mottoes or inscriptions '' charm- 
ingly worked in all kinds of odd places, in 
one corner, or across the middle, or along 
1 1 



1 62 DELICATE FEASTING. 

one or all the sides," as Mrs. Loftie suggests 
in her little book ''The Dining- Room." 
"Not only are such devices pretty and ap- 
propriate," continues Mrs. Loftie, "but they 
may sometimes afford a subject for dinner 
conversation when the weather has been ex- 
haustively discussed." Mrs. Loftie has made 
many excellent suggestions in her pages about 
laying the table, but this one is too cruel 
and too ironical. If people's conversational 
powers are so limited that they require the 
motto of a table napkin to help them out, it 
were better to prohibit conversation at table 
altogether, and have some one read aloud, as 
was the custom in the old monasteries, and 
also at the court of Frederick di Montefeltro, 
Duke of Urbino, who used to have Plutarch, 
Xenophon, and Aristotle read to him while 
he was at table, and thus maintained that 
serene frame of mind which is necessary for 
happiness at meals. 

The knives and forks used at Anglo-Saxon 
tables are generally larger and heavier than 
comfort requires. French knives and forks 
are smaller and quite strong enough for all 
food that figures on a civilized table. The 
knife never exceeds nine and three quarters 
inches in length, the small knives seven and 



ON TABLE-SERVICE. 163 

three quarters inches, and the large forks eight 
and one quarter inches. Simple knives and 
forks seem to me to be desirable, and all 
heavy and elaborate ornamentation should 
be avoided, especially ornamentation in high 
relief, which is irritating to handle. On the 
other hand, variety may be charming. At a 
dainty dinner I would have knives and forks 
of a different pattern with every dish. 

The glasses that figure on a table will de- 
pend on the wines served ; they should be 
convenient and elegant in form, and depend- 
ent for their charm simply on the purity of 
the crystal and the beauty of their silhouette. 
Engraved glass, cut glass, and colored glass 
is used very sparingly by people of taste. 
Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne wines 
should be drank out of nothing but the purest 
crystal glass, which conceals none of their 
qualities of color or scintillation. It is the 
custom to drink German wines out of colored 
glasses. Liqueur glasses are often colored also, 
but it seems absurd to mask the purity and 
delicate tones of whatever nectar we may be 
drinking by serving it in obfuscating glasses of 
green, blue, red, or any other color. For my 
part I would admit to thegourmet's table only 
pure and very simply decorated crystal glass. 



164 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Decanters play a very limited role on the 
real gourmet's table ; they are used only for 
such heavy wines as Port and Sherry or for 
light ordinary Bordeaux. To decant real 
wines is barbarous ; they should be served 
directly from the bottles in which they have 
sojourned while their qualities were ripening ; 
in the course of being poured from a bottle 
into a decanter a wine loses some of its aroma, 
gets agitated, and often catches cold. If the 
wine served is not real wine you may decant 
it and do whatever you please with it except 
serving it to your guests. 

The great difference between an English 
table and a French table, whether in a private 
house or in a restaurant, is, so far as the 
aspect is concerned, the complication of the 
former and the simplicity of the latter. The 
French use fewer utensils, and know nothing 
of that multiplicity of special apparatus — 
cruet-stands, sardine-boxes, pickle-forks, sauce- 
boxes, butter-coolers, biscuit -boxes, pepper- 
casters, trowels, toast-racks, claret-jugs — and 
a score other queer inventions which are the 
pride of English housekeepers, and which 
tend to encumber an English table to such 
a degree that there is hardly room left for 
the plates. The number of objects that fig- 



ON TABLE-SERVICE. 1 65 

ure on an English table is most confusing. 
You sit down with the contents of a whole 
cutlery-shop before you, and in the centre 
rises a majestic, but not immaculate monu- 
ment, containing specimens of all the condi- 
ments that Cross & Blackwell ever invented. 
It is an awful spectacle. 

In a French house, the articles for table- 
service are knives, forks, spoons, soup-ladles, 
salad spoon and fork, a manche a gigot (or 
handle to screw on to the knuckle-bone of a 
leg of mutton, so that the carver may hold 
it while he cuts), a hors d'ceitvre service, 
some bottle-stands, oil and vinegar stands, 
salt-cellars, pepper-mills, mustard-pots, hot- 
water dishes, oyster-forks, asparagus servers, 
ice-pails, nut-crackers, grape-scissors, crumb- 
brush and tray, a salver or tray, with a sugar- 
basin, etc., for tea, and there will be an end 
of the silver articles. With this apparatus, 
and the necessary supply of plates, dishes, 
crockery, glass, and linen, the most delicate 
and complicated repast may be perfectly 
served. 

Nowadays, gold or silver plate is very little 
used except in a few princely houses. Its 
absence from the table is not to be regretted ; 
the noise made by the knife and fork coming 



1 66 DELICATE FEASTING. 

into contact with gold or silver plate is dis- 
agreeable to the nerves ; the glare and reflec- 
tions cast upon the face of the diner by his 
gold or silver plate are disagreeable to the 
eyes. The gold or silver ware that figures 
on modern dining-tables should be limited 
to candlesticks, dessert -stands, and centre 
ornaments, if such are used. But in this 
matter it is preferable to follow the example 
of our ancestors, and if we are the lucky pos- 
sessors of fine silver, soiipieres by Pierre Ger- 
main, or ewers by Froment Meurice or the 
Fannieres, to exhibit them on our buffet or 
dresser rather than on the table. Remember 
that the table should be always free for the 
needs of the service. 

Let the plates and dishes off which we eat 
be as fine as our purses can afford. One of 
the great errors made at the Cafe Anglais, 
in Paris, is to serve fine food on compara- 
tively coarse faience, or plates. A simple cut- 
let tastes all the better if it is served on a 
porcelain plate of beautiful form and tasteful 
ornamentation. A refinement in table-serv- 
ice is to have many sets of porcelain, and to 
serve each course on dishes and plates of 
different design ; and, above all things, see 
that the plates are warm — not burning hot. 



ON TABLE-SERVICE. 1 6/ 

but sujfficlently warm not to diminish the 
heat of the food that is served on them. 

The gourmet will prefer the exclusive use 
of ceramic dishes and plates in serving a din- 
ner, because a metal dish when heated com- 
municates a slight flavor of its own to the 
natural flavor of the viands. In the Parisian 
restaurants, even in the best, they have a vile 
habit of serving a duck, for instance, on a 
metal dish, and, while the inaitre d' hotel cuts 
up the duck and deposits the pieces on the 
dish, he has a spirit-lamp burning beneath it. 
The dish thus becomes hot, the gravy bub- 
bles, the pieces of duck get an extra cooking 
and absorb the taste of the heated metal, and 
the result of the whole operation is 7iot roast 
duck, but oxidized duck. This barbarous op- 
eration is practised daily, but only very few 
diners protest, to such a low level has the 
art of delicate feasting fallen in the country 
where it once flourished most brilliantly. 

The manner of serving a dinner is a ques- 
tion easily settled, provided we bear in mind 
the fact that it is desirable to let as little 
time as possible elapse between the cooking 
of food and the eating of it. This considera- 
tion militates against the service a la Fra7i- 
qaise^ and favors the service d la Russe. In 



1 68 DELICATE FEASTING. 

the former system each course is served on 
the table, and afterwards removed in order 
to be cut up, while in the latter system the 
dishes are cut up before being passed round. 
The service a la Frangaise allows a dish to 
cool on the table before it is served ; the 
service a la Russe is incompatible with the 
art of decorating and mounting dishes, and 
suppresses altogether the exterior physiog- 
nomy of the French grande cuisine ^^\\\q\\ is, 
after all, no great loss. The modern system, 
dictated by reason and by convenience, is a 
compromise. The table is decorated simply 
with fruit, sweetmeats, flowers, and such or- 
naments as caprice may suggest ; the entrees 
are handed round on small dishes ; the im- 
portant pieces, such as roasts and pieces 
de resistance^ are brought in, each by the 
maitre d'hotely presented to the mistress of 
the house, who makes a sign of acknowledg- 
ment, and then taken off to be cut up by the 
maitre d'Jiotel on a side table. The carved 
dish is then handed round by the waiters, 
and, when all the guests are served, it is 
placed, if the dish be important enough, on 
a hot-water stand in front of the host or host- 
ess, or in the same condition on a side table 
awaiting the needs of the guests. I am speak- 



ON TABLE-SERVICE. 1 69 

ing always of dinners where the number of 
the guests is wisely limited ; no other din- 
ners can be well served, so that it matters 
little whether they be served a la Riisse or a 
la Frangaise. By the fusion of the two sys- 
tems, as above indicated, it is possible to give 
full and entire satisfaction to the cook, who 
always has a right to demand that his crea- 
tions shall be presented for judgment in the 
most favorable conditions, while, at the same 
time, the guests have their eyes satisfied by 
an agreeably arranged table, and their pal- 
ates respected by being enabled to taste the 
delicate masterpieces of the cook in all the 
freshness of their savory succulence. 

The inconveniences of our modern system 
of waiting, where the dishes are presented 
between the guests and to each one's left, 
have been noticed already and the remedy 
indicated, namely, the substitution of narrow 
tables arranged as convenience may dictate, 
but with the guests seated on one side only, 
so that the dishes may be presented to them 
from the front. If such tables were used, 
their decoration would necessarily be very 
simple, and composed mainly of candlesticks 
and vases for flowers. With our modern ta- 
bles, at which the guests are seated on all 



I/O DELICATE FEASTING. 

the sides, the simpler the decoration the bet- 
ter. It is essential that the view should not 
be obstructed, and that opposite neighbors 
should not have to '' dodge " in order to catch 
a glimpse of each other. 

At a feast the guest and his comfort should 
be first considered, and the guest should nev- 
er be made the slave of the ornaments and 
accessories of the table. 

All floral decoration, however it may be 
arranged, should be kept low, no flowers or 
foliage being allowed to rise to such a height 
above the table as to interfere with the free 
view of each guest over the whole table from 
end to end, and from side to side. 

Let the floral decoration be as much as 
possible witJiout perfume. Nothing is more 
intolerable to some sensitive natures than an 
atmosphere impregnated with the odor of 
violets, roses, or mignonette, particularly dur- 
ing meals. 

In future, when the reformed table shall 
have been introduced, and the custom of 
sitting on one side only shall have been re- 
stored, it will be possible to banish the floral 
decoration from the table itself, and to place 
it in the form of a wall of verdure and flow- 
ers as a background to the guests. For ex- 



ON TABLE-SERVICE. 171 

amples, see the various pictures of feasts by 
the old Florentine painters already men- 
tioned. 

For lighting a dinner-table there remains 
to my mind but one illumination, namely, 
candles placed on the table itself in handsome 
flanibeauXy and on the walls in sconces. Gas 
and electricity are abominations in a dining- 
room. Any system of lighting which leaves 
no part of a room in soft shadow is painful 
to . the eye and fatal to the artistic ensem- 
ble. For the woman who wishes to show 
her beauty in the most advantageous condi- 
tions, and for the gourmet who wishes to 
feast his palate and his eyes in the most re- 
fined manner possible, a diner aux bougies 
is the ideal. At the Rothschild houses in 
Paris the dinners are served by candlelight, 
and, if the viands and the wines were as fine 
as the candlesticks, their dinners would be 
perfect. 

In the Baron Edmond de Rothschild's 
dining-room the air is kept cool in the sum- 
mer by two columns of crystal ice placed in 
a bed of flowers and foliage, one at each end 
of the room, and the floral decoration of the 
table is composed exclusively of cut orchids. 



XVI. 
ON SERVING WINES. 

The classical theory of serving wines at 
a dinner is the following : 

Immediately after the soup dry white wines 
are offered, such as French wines, Marsala, 
Sherry, Madeira, dry Syracuse, etc. 

With the fish dry white wines are also 
served. With oysters Chablis is preferred. 

With relev^s of butcher's meat and warm 
entries red wines. Burgundy or Bordeaux. 

With cold entrees and other cold pieces 
fine white wines are served. 

With the roast come the fine Bordeaux or 
Champagne wines, or both. With the entre- 
inetSy Champagne alone. With the dessert, 
liqueur wines, such as Frontignan, Lunel, 
Alicante, Malvoisie, Port, Tokay, Lacrima- 
Christi, etc. 

The red wines ought to be drank at a 
temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. 
White wines should always be served cold. 

When a selection of wines figures on the 



ON SERVING WINES. 1 73 

menu in the order above indicated, the table 
requires to be loaded with wine-glasses, at 
least half a dozen by the side of each plate, 
and during the whole dinner the waiters are 
continually inserting a bottle surreptitiously 
between every two guests, and murmuring, 
as they fill the glasses, '* Chateau -Lafitte, 
1865," "Clos Vougeot, 1873," etc. 

Now it seems to me that, among the many 
practices which interfere with comfort, we 
must note both the attendants who pass 
dishes over the shoulders of the guests and 
the attendants who help wine to the com- 
pany. The handing round of dishes can be 
rendered less disagreeable by modifying our 
current ways of sitting at table. As for the 
custom of having an attendant to help wine, 
it might be abolished with advantage if men 
could be convinced that the drinking of many 
wines during one meal is a gross form of lux- 
ury, and one disastrous to the digestive or- 
gans. 

The multitude of wines, like the multitude 
of dishes, served in succession, however care- 
fully that succession may be ordained, wea- 
ries the palate and fatigues the stomach. If 
six fine wines are served in succession in the 
course of one repast, at least half of the num- 



1/4 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ber are not fully appreciated. As we advo- 
cate simplicity in the number and in the prep- 
aration of the dishes, so we recommend sim- 
plicity in the serving of the wines, for our ob- 
ject in dining is neither to gorge and guzzle 
nor yet to get drunk. When we rise from 
the table we wish to feel our heads clear, 
our papillae clean, and our tongues free, and, 
above all, we wish to sleep calmly, and to 
wake up the next morning fresh and rosy. 

For my own part, I prefer to drink one 
wine throughout my dinner, either red Bor- 
deaux or Burgundy, or a dry Champagne, 
unsophisticated by the addition of liqueurs 
or excess of caramel. These wines I drink 
poured into the glass directly out of their na- 
tive bottles, and the Champagne, being of the 
right quality, I do not pollute by contact with 
ice. Really good natural Champagne should 
be drunk cool, but not iced. To decant Cham- 
pagne, whether into jugs with an ice-recepta- 
cle in the middle, such as modern progress 
has invented, or into a carafe frappee, as is 
the custom with the less civilized French 
drinkers, or to freeze the bottle in the ice- 
pail, or to put lumps of ice into the glass, 
are equally barbarous operations. The only 
Champagne that may be iced is poor and 



ON SERVING WINES. 1 75 

very sweet Champagne, whose sugary taste 
is masked by coldness. 

At a truly scientific feast, where all the con- 
ditions of success exist, both as regards the 
limitation of the guests to the number of the 
Muses as a maximum, and also as regards the 
perfection of the viands, both in quality and 
in dressing, it is easy to dispense with the 
attendants who would be required to help 
wine at an ordinary dinner. At this scien- 
tific feast each man would have his bottle. 

I will even go further, and say that not 
only would each man have his bottle of Cham- 
pagne or his bottle of whatever other wine 
there might be, but also each man would 
have his leg of mutton, his duck, his par- 
tridge, his pheasant. This method alone is 
truly satisfactory, because it renders envy 
and favoritism impossible. A partridge has 
only one breast, and a leg of mutton has only 
a few slices which are ideal. Evidently, if 
the partridge or the leg of mutton has to be 
divided between several guests, one or more 
of them will be sacrificed for the benefit of 
the other or others. This is undesirable ; 
you do not invite people to dinner in order 
to subject them to martyrdom ; you do not 
accept an invitation to dinner with a view to 



176 DELICATE FEASTING. 

displaying moral qualities, such as self-abne- 
gation. The Russians have noble views on 
this point. Once I was invited to dinner by 
a Russian gentleman, who had asked me pre- 
viously if he could serve me any special dish. 
I begged that I might taste a certain Rus- 
sian mutton. When the dinner was served a 
whole sheep was carried in steaming hot on 
the shoulders of four Tartar waiters, and I 
was asked to select the part that pleased me 
best, the whole dish being at my disposal. 

So, with this question of wine, if we have 
wine let it be served in abundance, and let 
each guest have his bottle, and as many bot- 
tles as his thirst demands. 

The above remarks do not apply without 
reserve to family life and quotidian domestic 
repasts ; they are addressed to gourmets and 
to men who wish to do honor to their friends 
by giving them a real dinner. 

In order to feast delicately, it is perhaps 
necessary to be an egoist. The company of 
friends, or at least of one friend, is indispen- 
sable. A man cannot dine alone. But the 
happiness of each guest must be ministered 
to independently of the happiness of the oth- 
ers, and for that reason we advocate the ser- 
vice by unities — a complete dinner for each 



ON SERVING WINES. 1 77 

guest, so far at least as the chief dishes are 
concerned. This idea is not novel. For that 
matter, there are no novel ideas worth talking 
about. Tallemant des Reaux, in his '' His- 
toriettes," relates that the French poet Mal- 
herbe, who flourished at the end of the six- 
teenth century, one day '' gave a dinner to 
six of his friends. The whole feast consisted 
merely of seven boiled capons, one for each 
man, for he said that he loved them all equal- 
ly, and did not wjsh to be obliged to serve to 
one the upper joint and to another the wing." 

The smaller the dinner the better will be 
the chance of its being well-cooked. In these 
days of wealth and parade the " aristologist " 
craves after simplicity. 

The late Mr. Walker, author of "The Orig- 
inal," wrote a series of papers on the "Art 
of Dining," which contain many good hints. 
Walker was a partisan of simplicity. " Com- 
mon soup," he says, " made at home, fish 
of little cost, any joints, the cheapest vege- 
tables, some happy and unexpensive intro- 
duction, provided everything is good in qual- 
ity, and the dishes are well dressed and served 
hot and in succession, with their adjuncts, will 
insure a quantity of enjoyment which no one 
need be >afraid to offer." 
12 



1/8 DELICATE FEASTING. 

Thus we see that delicate eating and deli- 
cate drinking are not questions of many kinds 
of wines, multitudes of dishes, or great state 
of serving-men, but rather of fineness of the 
quality of all that is offered, simplicity and 
daintiness in its preparation, rapidity and 
convenience in the serving of it, and appre- 
ciativeness on the part of the guests. 

That marvellous story-writer, Guy de Mau- 
passant, says : " A man is a gourmet as he is 
a poet or an artist, or simply learned. Taste 
is a delicate organ, perfectible and worthy of 
respect like the eye and the ear. To be want- 
ing in the sense of taste is to be deprived of 
an exquisite faculty, of the faculty of dis- 
cerning the quality of aliments just as one 
may be deprived of the faculty of discerning 
the qualities of a book or of a work of art ; 
it is to be deprived of an essential sense, of 
a part of human superiority ; it is to belong 
to one of the innumerable classes of cripples, 
infirm people, and fools of which our race is 
composed ; it is, in a word, to have a stupid 
mouth just as we have a stupid mind. A 
man who does not distinguish between a laii- 
gouste and a lobster, between a herring, that 
admirable fish that carries within it all the 
savors and aromas of the sea, and a mack- 



ON SERVING WINES. 1 79 

erel or a whiting, is comparable only to a 
man who could confound Balzac with Eugene 
Sue and a symphony by Beethoven with a 
military march composed by some regimental 
band-master. 



XVII. 
THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 

Erasmus of Rotterdam, towards the end 
of his career, in 1530, wrote, for the use of 
the. young prince, Henry of Burgundy, a ht- 
tle treatise in Latin, "De CiviHtate Morum 
Puerihum," which was very soon afterwards 
translated into EngHsh by Robert Whyting- 
ton, and many times into French, under the 
title of '* Traits de Civilite Puerile et Hon- 
nete." This little treatise, which has re- 
mained until almost our own times a text- 
book in French schools, is the first special 
and complete book of etiquette composed in 
modern Europe, the first distinct study of 
good manners as a humble branch of philos- 
ophy. In this little book we shall find the 
elements of our modern table -manners for- 
mulated in a few brief axioms, such as the 
following : 

" Do not pick your teeth with the point of 
your knife, nor with your finger-nail, as dogs 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. i8l 

and cats do, nor with your napkin ; make use 
of a splinter of lentiscus wood, or a quill, or 
of those small bones which are found in the 
legs of fowls. 

'* Gayety is becoming at table, but not ef- 
frontery. Do not sit down without having 
washed your hands and cleaned your nails. 
When you wipe your hands drive away all 
morose thoughts ; at meals you ought not to 
seem sad yourself nor to sadden others. Nmn 
m convivio nee tristeni esse deeet nee eontris- 
tare quenqnamy 

Erasmus further recommends children not 
to put their elbows on the table ; not to 
wriggle on their chairs, but to sit upright ; 
and to lay their napkin on the left shoulder 
or the left arm. " The drinking-glass should 
be placed on the right, also the knife for cut- 
ting meat, nicely wiped (cttltellus escariiis rite 
pici'gatzis) ; the bread on the left. 

*' To begin a meal by drinking is the act 
of drunkards, who drink from habit and not 
from thirst. It is not only bad manners, but 
bad for the health. Before drinking, finish 
what food you have in your mouth, and do 
not approach your lips to the glass until you 
have wiped them with your napkin or your 
handkerchief. 



1 82 DELICATE FEASTING. 

^*To lick your greasy fingers, or to wipe 
them on your clothes, is equally bad man- 
ners ; it is better to make use of the table- 
cloth or of your napkin. 

'' Do not gnaw bones with your teeth, like 
a dog ; pick them clean with the aid of a 
knife. 

" Help yourself to salt with the aid of a 
knife. 

" It is good that varied conversation should 
create some intervals in the continuity of a 
meal. Miilieres ornat silentmm, sed magis 
pueritiamP (These Latin words may be 
translated by some bold man who will pref- 
ace his remarks by declaring that he does 
not agree with Erasmus, so far at least as the 
ladies are concerned.) 

*' In placing a dish on the table, and in fill- 
ing up a glass, never use your left hand. 

" To speak with your mouth full is both 
impolite and dangerous." 

Now, from the above maxims, and from 
the whole treatise, as well as from other writ- 
ings of Erasmus, we may justly conclude that 
he was a refined and urbane gentleman ; and 
those who followed his precepts would cer- 
tainly be charming hosts and agreeable 
guests, for in his remarks on table -manners 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 1 83 

he has touched upon all the points that are 
essential to decency, comfort, and good-feel- 
ing. These points concern three matters, 
namely, the laying of the table, the serving 
of the meats, and the behavior and frame of 
mind of the guests. 

A veteran writer, Theophile Gautier, who 
uttered that famous axiom so saddening to 
journalists, " Daily newspapers are published 
every day," also fathered a paradox in con- 
tradiction to the lamentation of the Preacher: 
— " There is nothing new under the sun," said 
the pessimistic Hebrew. *' Everything is new 
and hitherto unpublished," replied Gautier, 
" totit est iitedity For this reason I have 
quoted some observations of Erasmus of Rot- 
terdam on table-manners, and now beg leave 
to gloss and comment upon them, beginning 
with the very important detail of toothpicks 
and picking teeth. The use of fine chicken- 
bones, which Erasmus recommended, we 
should now consider rustic. The only tooth- 
picks that hygiene and convenience admit 
are wooden splinters or quills. Gold or silver 
toothpicks are dangerous, because the metal 
may scratch or chip the enamel of the teeth. 
The use of the precious metals for making 
such a mean instrument as a toothpick is an 



1 84 DELICATE FEASTING. 

example of snobbishness. An ivory tooth- 
pick is also objectionable, because the ivory- 
is absorbent, and in the course of use be- 
comes unclean. 

Use a toothj)ick, and throw it away after- 
wards. You do not want to carry a toothpick 
in your pocket unless you are travelling in 
barbarous or over-squeamish countries. 

Here the question arises : " How is the 
toothpick to be used ?" The reply is : '^ Sim- 
ply, without affectation, and without obsti- 
nacy." At some of the best tables at which 
I have had the honor of sitting in Europe 
I found a quill toothpick laid at the foot 
of the wine-glasses, as being as indispen- 
sable a part of the convert, or service, as a 
knife and fork. But, unless I deliberately 
watched for a certain length of time, thereby 
losing the enjoyment of a part of the dinner 
— which, you may be sure, was not often the 
case — I never noticed guests using these 
toothpicks. And yet they certainly did use 
them, but, when doing so, they did not hoist 
the white flag to call the attention of the 
whole table to the operation, as those persons 
do who try to hide their faces behind their 
napkin. This manoeuvre, so common among 
the Americans, is at best a false -prudery, 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 1 85 

worthy only of the intelligence of an ostrich. 
To hold up your napkin so is simply to make 
a signal, as who should say : '' Now, look 
out. I'm going to pick my teeth. See how 
ashamed I am of the clumsy way in which I 
do the said picking." 

Such picking of teeth as is necessary for 
comfort may be done at table without any 
holding up of napkins, without any clumsy 
holding of the hand before the mouth, which 
is almost as ostentatious as the white-flag 
signal, and, above all, without any scraping, 
smacking, or sucking noises. The essence of 
good table-manners lies in not making your- 
self remarked, and in not making yourself in 
any way disagreeable to your neighbors. 

A table-knife is to be used to cut food, 
and never to convey food to the mouth, 
which is the function of forks and spoons. 
Nevertheless, you constantly see people eat- 
ing cheese with a knife. The treatise on 
** Civilite Puerile et Honnete," used in the an- 
cient and well-mannered school where I was 
brought up, expressly forbade this usage. 
Dry cheese, I was taught, should be cut into 
small pieces on your plate as need requires, 
and each piece taken up delicately with 
the fingers and so conveyed to the mouth ; 



l86 DELICATE FEASTING. > 

soft cheese should be spread with the knife 
on each mouthful of bread ; frothy cheese, 
like cream-cheese, should be eaten with a 
spoon. 

The Anglo-Saxons are afraid to use their 
fingers to eat with, especially the English. 
Thanks to this hesitation, I have seen, in the 
course of my travels in the Old World, many 
distressing sights. I have seen ladies at- 
tempt to eat a craw -fish {ecrevisse) with a 
knife and fork and abandon the attempt in 
despair. I have also seen men in the same 
fix. I have seen — oh, barbarous and cruel 
spectacle! — Anglo-Saxons, otherwise appar- 
ently civilized, cut off the points of aspara- 
gus and, with a fork, eat only these points, 
thus leaving the best part of the vegetable 
on their plates. As for artichokes, they gen- 
erally utterly defeat the attacks of those who 
trust simply to the knife and fork. 

Fingers must be used for eating certain 
things, notably asparagus, artichokes, fruit, 
olives, radishes, pastry, and even small fried 
fish ; in short, everything which will not 
dirty or grease the fingers may be eaten with 
the fingers. For my own part I prefer to 
eat lettuce salad with my fingers rather than 
with a fork, and Queen Marie Antoinette 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 1 8/ 

and other ladies of the eighteenth century- 
were of my way of thinking. If the ladies 
could only see how pretty is their gesture 
when their diaphanous forefinger and thumb 
grasp a leaf of delicate green lettuce and 
raise that leaf from the porcelain plate to 
their rosy lips, they would all immediately 
take to eating salad a la Marie Antoinette. 
Only bear in mind, good ladies, that if you 
do wish to eat lettuce salad with your fingers 
you must mix the salad with oil and vine- 
gar, and not with that abominable, ready- 
made white "salad-dressing," to look upon 
which is nauseating. 

May Heaven preserve us from excessive 
Anglomania in matters of table-service and 
eating ! The English tend to complicate the 
eating-tools far too much. They have too 
many forks for comfort, and the forms of them 
are too quaint for practical utility. Certainly, 
silver dessert knives and forks are very good 
in their way, because they are not susceptible 
to the action of fruit acids, but it is vain and 
clumsy to attempt to make too-exclusive use 
of the knife and fork in eating fruit. Don't 
imitate, for instance, certain ultra - correct 
English damsels who eat cherries with a fork 
and swallow the stones because they are too 



1 88 DELICATE FEASTING. 

modest, or, rather, too asinine, to spit them 
out on to the plate. Eating is not a thing 
to be ashamed of. To thoroughly enjoy a 
peach you must bite it and feel the juicy, 
perfumed flesh melt in your mouth. But, let 
the Anglomaniacs say what they please, there 
is no necessity of sticking a fork into the 
peach and peeling it while so impaled, as if 
it were an ill-favored and foul object. A 
peach is as beautiful to the touch as it is to 
the eye ; a peach held between human fin- 
gers has its beauty enhanced by the beauty 
of the fingers. However dainty and ornate 
the silver dessert -knife and fork may be, it 
always irritates me to see people cut up their 
peaches, or pears, or apricots, or what not, 
into cubes and parallelopipeds, as if dessert 
were a branch of conic sections. Imitate 
Marie Antoinette, ladies : use your fingers 
more freely ; eat decently, of course, but do 
not be the slaves of silly Anglomania or New- 
port crazes. To eat a pear or an apple con- 
veniently cut it into quarters, and peel each 
quarter in turn as you eat it. The peach, 
too, can be cut into quarters if the eater is 
timid. Apricots do not need peeling, nor 
plums either. Who would be bold enough 
to peel a fresh fig, or even to touch such a 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 1 89 

delicate fruit with even the purest silver in- 
struments ? 

I have referred to the disastrous discom- 
fiture of English men and women by a dish 
of crawfish. This dish, not being of com- 
mon occurrence in America or England, 
might be neglected by an unthoughtful writ- 
er, but as fifty thousand Americans visit Eu- 
rope every year, and as I could wish them 
all, when in France or Belgium, to taste this 
meat, I will add a note on the way of tack- 
ling it. The three chief forms in which you 
will find the crawfish served in Europe are 
as a coiilis in potage bisque^ generally, alas ! 
much adulterated with carrots and rice flour; 
boiled in a court-bouillon and served as ecre- 
visses en buisson ; cooked in a rich and highly 
spiced sauce which produces ecrevisses a la 
Bordelaise. In all these forms the crawfish, 
which, as you know, of course, is a sort of min- 
iature fresh-water lobster, is excellent. The 
soup you eat, naturally, with a spoon. Of 
the ecrevisses en buisson you help yourself, 
with your fingers, to a bunch of half a dozen ; 
take them one by one ; pull off and crack and 
suck the claws ; break the shell with your 
teeth or with nut-crackers, and extract the 
dainty flesh of the tail. After this dish it is 



1 90 DELICATE FEASTING. 

necessary to pass round finger-bowls and to 
change the napkins. Ecrevisses a la Borde- 
laise must be eaten in the same manner ; fin- 
ger-bowls and clean napkins, if not a com- 
plete bath, are necessary after the consump- 
tion of a good dish of this succulent crusta- 
cean. 

It being desirable that people's table- 
manners should be equal to any emergency, 
whether they are in their own country or 
engaged in foreign travel, I will add that 
the use of salt-spoons is not universal in 
this world. If you happen to be at a table 
where the host, recalcitrant to progress, has 
not invested any capital in vermeil, silver, or 
bone salt-spoons, help yourself to salt with 
the point of your knife, as Erasmus of Rot- 
terdam tells you, having previously wiped it 
on your plate or on a bit of bread. Do 7iot 
attempt to help yourself to salt with the 
handle of your fork or spoon. In countries 
where salt-spoons are not held in honor, such 
an attempt would be esteemed a mark of ill- 
breeding. 

The use of the table-napkin not being 
thoroughly understood in some remote parts 
of the earth, only recently opened to the 
march of civilization, it may be well to state 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 191 

that the napkin should not be used for mop- 
ping a perspiring brow, or wiping your nose, 
or indeed for wiping anything but your mouth 
and fingers. When you sit down to table 
you ought to find. your napkin neatly folded 
and placed on your plate with a fair piece of 
bread or a roll inside it. The most worthy 
person at table having set the example, you 
place the bread to the right of your plate, un- 
fold your napkin entirely and lay it over your 
knees loosely. You may have heard travel- 
lers scoff at the practical Frenchman who 
stuffs one corner of his napkin inside his 
shirt-collar and spreads it fully over the front 
of his person from his chin down to his knees. 
This is the practice of the French people of 
the middle and lower classes, who are thrifty 
and prudent, and who wish to eat at their 
ease and not to spot their clothes. There is 
nothing ridiculous in this practice. There is a 
reason, and an excellent reason, for so spread- 
ing the napkin, and if I were dining at home, 
or alone at a restaurant or club, and had on 
my spotless shirt and open Avaistcoat and 
claw-hammer coat, all ready to go to the op- 
era, I should certainly spread my napkin over 
my manly and snowy bosom, just as the 
Frenchman does, and so I should dine at my 



192 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ease, serenely and without care, knowing that 
I had thus insured the immaculateness of 
my hnen. However, let it be remembered 
that company manners, in all countries, re- 
quire you simply to spread your napkin 
loosely over your knees and to eat cleanly 
and decently. 

With the dessert-plate, and on it, appears 
the mouth-bowl or the finger-bowl. That 
excellent lady, Madame la Comtesse de Gen- 
lis, who was governess to the children of the 
Due d'Orleans, one of whom became King 
Louis Philippe of France, wrote in her '' Dic- 
tionnaire Critique et Raisonne des Etiquettes 
de la Cour," published in 1818: "Formerly 
women, after dinner or supper, rose and left 
the table to rinse out their mouths ; the men, 
and even the princes of royal blood, out of 
respect for the women, did not allow them- 
selves to remain in the dining-room to do the 
same thing ; they passed into an anteroom. 
Nowadays this species of toilet is performed 
at table in many houses, where you see 
Frenchmen sitting next to women wash their 
hands and spit in a bowl. This spectacle is 
a very astonishing one for their grandfathers 
and grandmothers." The good Madame de 
Genlis adds that this usage comes from Eng- 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. 1 93 

land, and that the custom is, certainly, not 
French. The noble dame also subjoins an 
indignant note to the effect that Plutarch 
styled the dinner-table as the '' altar of the 
gods of friendship and of hospitality." 

Certainly the operation of using a mouth- 
bowl is far from pleasing to contemplate, but 
it is very convenient ; it conduces to comfort, 
and, provided it be generally practised, no- 
body thinks anything about it. The mate- 
rial side of eating cannot be other than disa- 
greeable if looked at from an absolute point 
of view, instead of from the point of view of 
usage and convenience. Food and the act 
of eating, masticating, and swallowing are in 
themselves disgusting phenomena. That hor- 
ribly snobbish and conceited Lord Byron — I 
mean the famous poet — used to profess that 
the spectacle of a pretty woman eating filled 
him with horror; and, after all, a civilized 
man devouring, with all possible good-breed- 
ing, a slice of roast beef, is as disagree- 
able a sight as a crow tearing and devour- 
ing a piece of carrion. But eating being a 
necessity, nature and civilization have taken 
care to surround the operation with every- 
thing that tends to distract the attention 
from the material side ; and they have suc- 
13 



194 DELICATE FEASTING. 

ceeded so completely that not one man out 
of a thousand knows anything about the 
physiology of eating or the chemistry of food. 
Eating has become a social as well as a nat- 
ural act ; it has been sublimated by the idea 
of hospitality ; the festive board has ac- 
quired a certain solemnity from its con- 
nection with the great festivals of the fam- 
ily ; and dinner has become the highest 
function of home life, a daily act to which 
no other can be compared in importance 
and results. 

To return to the mouth-bowl, when once 
its convenience has been recognized it can- 
not be regarded as any more objectionable 
than a toothpick, and it must be made use 
of in the same spirit, simply, without osten- 
tation, and without false shame. The most 
appropriate bowls are made of white, dark 
blue, or opal glass, about three inches deep 
and four and one half in diameter, either 
round or square, and in each bowl is served 
a little goblet to match, containing tepid wa- 
ter perfumed with mint or orange flower just 
sufficiently to take away the disagreeable in- 
sipidity of warm water. If you wish to per- 
form the complete operation, you take a lit- 
tle water into your mouth and roll it about 



THE ART OF EATING AT TABLE. I95 

without making strange noises or still strang- 
er grimaces, but discreetly and in a manner 
such as to rinse your teeth and gums ; mean- 
while you have emptied the rest of the water 
out of the goblet into the bowl, where you 
dip your finger-tips; then, having sufficient- 
ly washed your fingers, you raise the bowl to 
your mouth, spit the water out of your mouth 
into it, replace the empty goblet in the bowl, 
and the waiter removes the object, while you 
wipe your mouth and your fingers on your 
napkin, the whole business being the affair 
of half a minute. Of course, if you are at 
a table where the mouth-rinsing is not gen- 
erally practised, you will abstain ; but let 
us hope that it will not be your misfortune 
to dine at a table where finger-bowls are 
not known. If such is your unhappy lot, 
you are quite justified in filling up a glass 
of water, dipping your finger-tips in it, 
and even moistening your napkin in order 
the better to wipe your lips clean before 
leaving the table. These small operations, 
trivial as they may seem, are necessary for 
comfort and for cleanliness ; and cleanliness, 
it has been said, is next to godliness. 



XVIII. 
ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. 

In the grammar in which I learned the ele- 
ments of the Spanish tongue, one of the ex- 
ercises, I remember, began as follows : '' I like 
to dine always at home ; an invitation incon- 
veniences me. Nevertheless, it is necessary 
to take account of the requirements of soci- 
ety. I have never desired to appear rude, 
nor have I been wanting in the consideration 
that is due to friends." 

An American lady, who has devoted much 
time to the study of the social habits of Eu- 
rope, and who has imparted to her country- 
men the results of her observations in lect- 
ures which have given her rank as an author- 
ity on matters of comparative civilization, 
once confided to me her disappointment at 
the reception that she had met with at the 
hands of the Spaniards during a holiday tour 
in the Castilles and Andalusia. ^' I started," 
she said, ** with many letters of introduction 



ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. I97 

to the best people in Madrid and Seville. I 
presented my letters. The people returned 
my call ; that is to say, the men did. They 
also placed their carriages and servants at 
my disposal, and obtained for me permis- 
sions to view libraries and to touch relics of 
the greatest sanctity. But none of them in- 
vited me to dinner, or even to take so much 
as a cup of tea." 

From this fact the amiable sociologist con- 
cluded that the Spaniards are inhospitable 
and disagreeable people, without reflecting 
that there was no reason why the Spaniards 
should change their habits for her sake, and 
that though her desire to pry into their home- 
life might be legitimate from an absolute point 
of view, it was the height of indiscreetness 
from the semi-Oriental point of view of Moor- 
ish Spain, which still retains all its force in 
contemporary Spain. The Spaniards, it is 
true, are chary of invitations. Their home 
is very sacred. They do not ask the new ac- 
quaintance to dine with them five minutes 
after being introduced. Like the man in the 
Spanish grammar, they consider an invita- 
tion as an inconvenience, not so much be- 
cause they are of inhospitable nature or be- 
cause they have no spare cash to speak of, 



198 DELICATE FEASTING. 

but because, like the patriarchs of old, they 
look upon hospitality as a very grave matter, 
and a duty in the discharge of which no sac- 
rifices are to be spared. Consequently, if 
they cannot entertain in a satisfactory man- 
ner, they prefer to shirk the task rather than 
perform it in a halting and make-shift way. 

This sentiment is thoroughly laudable, and 
in conformity with the best traditions of those 
ancient civilizations of the East from which 
we derive our own. Never invite a man to 
dine lightly, as you would ask him to take 
a cigarette. As P. Z. Didsbury remarked, in 
terms of unforgetable laconism, " A man can 
dine but once a day." How great, then, is 
the responsibility of him who ventures to 
take upon himself the providing and serving 
of this dinner! 

Furthermore, whenever, for reasons which 
we need not examine, you are invited to dine, 
and you accept the invitation, do not be in 
too great a hurry to return the compliment. 
In nine cases out of ten the blackest ingrati- 
tude of which you could be capable would 
be to invite your amphitryon and inflict 
upon him a return dinner. 

Doubtless, in an ideal state of things, it 
would often be delightful to accept an invi- 



ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. 1 99 

tation to dinner. As it is, an invitation from 
people with whose hearts and minds I am not 
familiar fills me with terror. If I accept, I 
say to myself, What will befall me ? In their 
wish to do me honor and give me pleasure, 
have my would-be hosts realized the gravity 
of the deed they are about to perpetrate ? 
Have they devoted thought to the subject 
of dining? Having invited me to dine, do 
they know how to dine themselves? Will 
the temperature of their dining-room be nei- 
ther too high nor too low ? Will the lights 
be so arranged that my eyes will not be daz- 
zled, and that restful bits of shadow will re- 
main soothingly distributed about the room? 
Will the chairs be the outcome of reason, or 
merely of the furniture-maker's caprice ? Will 
there be a draught under the table or over it? 
Will the table-service be agreeable to the eye? 
Will the food be real food ? These and a 
score other interrogations rise to my lips, and 
finally I put to myself the clinching ques- 
tion, ** Shall I be sick before or after the or- 
deal ?'* And, as a rule, I prefer to be sick 
before the dinner, and send an excuse, thus 
making sure of avoiding sickness after it. 
My feigned indisposition often deprives me 
of charming company, but it does not pre- 



200 DELICATE FEASTING. 

vent me repairing to a restaurant where I am 
sure of combining a menu to suit my palate 
and where I have the right to criticise and 
refuse whatever is unworthy. 

This confession may seem to imply an un- 
sociable nature. On the contrary, it is the 
lamentation of a victim of sociability. My 
experience, which, without having extended 
over many lustres, has perhaps compensated 
for its brevity by extreme application and un- 
tiring assiduity, has demonstrated, generally 
speaking, that the people who have invited 
me to dine with them would have done bet- 
ter to have had themselves invited to dine 
with me. 

By dint of pondering over gastronomic dis- 
asters for which kindly disposed friends and 
acquaintances were responsible, I have con- 
ceived certain projects of reform, all more or 
less chimerical. I have wondered, for in- 
stance, why, in countries where rational gov- 
ernments exist, and where a minister is ap- 
pointed to attend to the interests of the fine 
arts, with, under him, directors, deputy-direct- 
ors, inspectors, and a dozen grades of minor 
functionaries, no emperor, king, or republic 
has yet thought of creating a Minister of 
Gastronomy. Hitherto the sad fact remains 



ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. 201 

that the Art of Delicate Feasting does not 
receive state encouragement in any country 
on the face of the whole earth. 

Not only do governments ignore or neglect 
the gastronomic art, but even private initia- 
tive and private endowment are wanting. Be- 
nevolent citizens leave money for the foun- 
dation of institutions of all kinds ; important 
sums are bequeathed for the endowment of 
research ; but no one has ever yet thought of 
instituting a permanent Gastronomic Acade- 
my or of endowing a chair of gastronomic 
criticism in our existing educational estab- 
lishments. Criticism, this is what we need. 
It was criticism and the incessant exigencies 
of competent critics which made the great 
cooks and the great restaurants of the past. 
Criticism alone can save private and public 
cookery from irremediable decadence and re- 
store the art of delicate feasting to the emi- 
nent place it deserves in the preoccupations 
of civilized humanity. With this conviction 
at heart, I conceived an idea which seemed 
to me quite practical, namely, the formation 
of an International League for the protection 
of diners-out and for the general advance- 
ment of the art of delicate feasting. Con- 
sidering the misadventures that befall one in 



202 DELICATE FEASTING. 

private houses, and the slovenly and Inartistic 
ways that are rapidly becoming traditional 
even in some of the oldest and best restau- 
rants of the world, it is desirable that meas- 
ures should be taken to make criticism effect- 
ual and productive of reform. It might be 
going too far, perhaps, to suggest that a man 
has a right to ask for references when he is 
invited to dine in a strange house. On the 
other hand, it would be a great boon if one 
could obtain some information not only about 
private houses, but also about public restau- 
rants, in the various cities of the world where 
civilized men do most congregate. Hence 
the idea of a league of diners-out and of an 
information and inquiry office, where notes 
about hosts and hostesses might be central- 
ized and communicated to the members of the 
league in the interests of the culinary art as 
well as of public health in general. (Here, 
for instance, are some samples of the entries 
which an information-office of this kind might 
catalogue : 

" Mrs. A. : Sauces dangerous, red wines 
fair, Champagne third rate, company good. 
Robust members of the league only can vent- 
ure to sit at Mrs. A.'s table. This hostess has 
been warned, but hitherto disdains criticism. 



ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. 203 

" Mrs. B. : Soup always bad ; plates insuf- 
ciently heated ; claret dangerously adulter- 
ated ; coffee-cups cold. 

" Mrs. C. : Serves tepid coffee, made with 
essence, in cups that have not been previ- 
viously warmed. Dinner elaborate ; nothing 
but entrees ; nothing to eat. This table is 
pretentious and hopeless. Mrs. C. is an old 
offender. Two habitues of her Tuesday din- 
ner-parties died last year. (N.B. — These un- 
fortunate victims were not members of the 
league.) 

'' Mrs, D. : In this house the pepper-mill is 
unknown ; uses ready-made salad-dressing ; 
the fifth chair to the hostess's right hand is 
in a violent draught. 

" Mrs. E.: Cooking excellent; service fair; 
cellar not deleterious, but far from ideal ; 
Champagne good. This lady, unfortunately, 
insists upon decorating the table with strong- 
ly smelling flowers. Her case is interesting, 
and recommended to members of the league 
who have persuasive talent and a taste for 
evangelizing. 

'^ Mrs. F. : Serves game on silver dishes, 
with spirit-lamp burning beneath ; result, ox- 
idized snipe. 

** Mrs. G. : Member of the league ; makes 



204 DELICATE FEASTING. 

great efforts to satisfy the requirements of 
high gastronomic art ; coffee perfect ; both 
the cups, the spoons, and even the sugar, are 
warmed." 

-^Y gave pubHcity to this, as I thought, brill- 
iant and original idea of an International 
League, in an article published in a most 
influential London newspaper about a year 
ago ; but, to my sorrow, nobody has yet of- 
fered to become a member, although I did 
not suggest that any subscription would be 
levied. 

In presence of such indifference, what is to 
be done? How can we revive the spirit of 
criticism which alone can rescue the art of 
cookery from its actual state of decadence? 
The case seems almost hopeless, for the 
men of the present generation do not appear 
to have the sentiment of the table ; they 
know neither its varied resources nor its infi- 
nite refinements ; their palates are dull, and 
they are content to eat rather than to dine. 
The delicate feaster is, nowadays, a rarity, 
and a man of thirty or thirty-five years of 
age who knows how to order a dinner scien- 
tifically, and to avoid even elementary sole- 
cisms, is a still greater rarity. In modern 



ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. 20$ 

Paris, formerly the Mecca of gourmands, it 
is becoming most difficult to dine, and every- 
where, even in the best restaurants — we will 
say no more about private houses — we see 
the disastrous consequences of the absence 
of crhjicism. Both cooking and service suf- 
fer. 'At the Cafe Anglais, while the cooking 
remains excellent, the waiters are inadequate 
both in number and in intelligence ; the but- 
tons of their waistcoats are frequently denud- 
ed of cloth, and their threadbare dress-coats 
are covered with grease-spots. And yet no- 
body complains. Our European contempo- 
raries devote no thought to such important 
details as the training and dressing of wait- 
ers, thereby showing themselves to be less 
civilized than the Russians, whose Tartar 
waiters are exemplary both in noiseless at- 
tention and in appropriate costume of spot- 
less purity. 

In the Parisian and European restaurants 
of the present day the tendency is to pre- 
pare the food and to organize the service as 
if a restaurant were a buffet. The cartes of 
old, so infinitely varied, have disappeared, to 
make way for the summary carte dii jour. 
In other words, cookery has become an in- 
dustry rather than an art, and the object of 



206 DELICATE FEASTING. 

the cook is to furnish rapidly large quantities 
of '' portions " rather than to prepare daintily 
a few dishes that will win for him the com- 
pliments of connoisseurs. The reasons of 
this phenomenon are manifold. The hurry 
and unrest of contemporary life do not con- 
duce to the appreciation of fine cooking, nor 
is fine cooking possible where it is necessary 
to prepare food in very large quantities. But 
why are the restaurants of the very highest 
class declining in excellence? Can they not 
count upon the patronage not only of the 
ilite of the gourmands of Paris, but also — 
thanks to club-trains and swift communica- 
tions of all kinds — upon the patronage of the 
gastronomers of the whole world ? This is 
true, but with important reserves. The de- 
cline of the art of cookery in the Parisian- 
restaurants is due chiefly to the development 
of club-life ! The men of fashion, leisure, or 
wealth who would formerly have lived at the 
restaurants now dine at the table d'hote of 
their clubs, between two feverish seances at 
the baccarat-table, and thus the restaurants 
have lost that nucleus of regular and fastidi- 
ous customers which, by its readiness to crit- 
icise and appreciate, obliged and encouraged 
the chef to keep up the traditions of the dain- 



ON BEING INVITED TO DINE. 207 

ty palates of the past. At present the great 
restaurants of Paris depend for support as 
much on foreigners as on resident Parisians ; 
their patrons are, therefore, unstable, and the 
criticism of their cookery less constant and 
less rigorous than it used to be. Once more 
the word " criticism " flows from the point of 
my pen, and sums^up the whole gist of the 
preceding pages. ' Without criticism there 
can be no delicate feasting. 

How often you hear people say, '' Oh ! I 
am not particular. I do not pay any atten- 
tion to what I eat." Certainly we can con- 
ceive that there are men devoid of the senses 
of taste and smell, just as we can conceive 
men for whom exquisite flowers, beautiful 
women, fine pictures, or incomparable stat- 
ues have no charm. But such men are to be 
pitied, supposing that we deign to accord 
them any manifestation of interest whatever. 
Whether our object be to get out of life the 
greatest amount of pleasure or the greatest 
amount of work, or both together, it is good 
policy to pay great attention to what we eat, 
and to strive in this, as in all that we under- 
take, to attain perfection. 



INDEX. 



Albumen, digestion of, 17. 

Allspice for seasoning pasties, 
etc., 56. 

Artichokes, a la Barigotile, 
45 ; garnish for, 46 ; how 
to cook, 45 ; how to eat, 
45 ; to serve, 47. 

Asparagus, cooking of, 42 ; 
dish for serving, 44 • how 
to eat, 44 ; tongs for serv- 
ing, 44 ; when to gather. 
42. 

Beans, cooking of dried, 37 ; 

string, a la Fran^aise, 48 ; 

to boil, 38. 
Beef, nutritive value of, 30; 

time required for digestion 

of, 33- 
Beef-tea, how to make, 23. 
Boiling, 23 ; action of, on 

meat, 24 ; temperature for. 

Bouillon, basis of good cook- 
ing, gi ; composition of, 
87, 88 ; court, how to make, 
57 ; grand, 106 ; how long 
may be kept, 92 ; in cook- 
ing artichokes, 46 ; in lai- 
tues ail Jus, 50 ; in mate- 
lote, 61 ; in potage, 85 ; in 
potato salad, 77 ; meat 
used in, 23 ; not an ali- 

14 



ment, 87 ; qualities de- 
manded in, 89 ; salts of 
potash in, 88 : stimulating 
power of, 88. 

Bouqicet garni, for season- 
ii^g. 55 ; ii^ matelote, 61. 

Bread, digestion of, 31 ; with 
soup, 93. 

Brine, effect on muscular tis- 
sue, 30. 

Broiling, conditions for, 19. 

Broth, most appetizing, 30. 

Butter, affecting digestion, 
29 , for cooking, 30. 

Candles on dining - table, 

171. 
Carrots, 35, 
Caterers, 66. 
Cauliflower, au gratin, 40 ; 

saute', 42 ; to cook, 40. 
Chapon, for seasoning salad, 

74. 

Chateaubriand, how to pre- 
pare a, 102. 

Cheese, how to eat, 186 ; in 
cauliflower, 42 ; nutritive 
value of, 31. 

Chemistry, knowledge of, 
necessary to a good cook, 

Coffee, action of, on nerves, 
126 ; Audiger's rule for 



2IO 



INDEX. 



making, 122 ; berries, 126 ; 
black, 126, 130 ; crushing 
berries of, 130 ; decoction 
of, 123 ; directions for 
making, 126 ; egg in, 126 ; 
filters for, 126 ; in Eng- 
land, 120 *, loaf-sugar in, 
131 ; quantity for a cup, 
128; results of drinking, 
122 ; sweetening cold, 131 ; 
to preserve aroma of, 127 ; 
Turkish, 128, 130. 

Consotmne, definition of, 86 ; 
in shell-fish soup, 93 ; nec- 
essary to fine soup, 86 ; 
qualities of a good, 89. 

Cook-books, 12 ; to whom 
useful, 13. 

Cooking, best methods of, 
28 ; decline of fine, in 
Paris, 206 ; delicate, stim- 
ulates appetite, 25 ; effect 
of, on muscular tissue, 15 ; 
effect of, on olive oil, 22 ; 
era of fine, 106 ; French, 
reason of superiority of, 
54 ; idea of quintessential, 
107 ; increases digestibility 
of blood, 1 6 ; insufficient 
or excessive heat in, 25 ; 
principles of, 12 ; recipes 
for, R. Estcourt, 9 ; why 
generally bad, 8. 

Copper pan for boiling vege- 
tables, 38, 

Court-bouillon, for cooking 
fish, 57, 58 ; to make, 57 ; 
vinegar or lemon in, 58, 

Crawfish, how to eat, 189. 

Crime, definition of, 86 ; 
qualities required in, 89. 

Croittons for soup, 93. 

Decanters, 164, 



Decanting tea, 124 ; wine, 
164, 174. 

Decoction of meat, 22 ; of 
tea, 123, 124. 

Digestion, how assisted, 28 ; 
comparison of, of different 
foods, 31 ; time required 
for different foods, 33 ; 
time varies with different 
people, 34. 

Dining in Florence, in Re- 
naissance, 151 ; in Middle 
Ages, 150 ; late Reyniere's 
idea of, 10 ; pleasures of, 
Brillat-Savarin, 2 ; without 
ceremony, 1 1. 

Dining-room, armor in, 133 ; 
cooling Rothschild's, 171 ; 
decoration of, 132, 133 ; 
display of dishes in, 133 ; 
in French villa, 135 ; flow- 
ers in, 134 ; of Directory 
epoch, 136 ; of Henri II., 

133 ; of Lord Lonsdale, 

134 ; of Mme. de Pompa- 
dour, 135 ; personality in 
arrangement of, 134; Pom- 
peian style of decorating, 
137; rare - colored, 135; 
Whistler's, 138. 

Dinner-parties, progressive, 2. 

Dishes, metal, 167. 

Duck, a la Portugaise, 109 ; 
time required for digestion 
of» 33 ; wrong method of 
serving, 167. 

Eating, a social act, 194 ; 
by candle-light, no; fruit, 
188 ; salad, a la Alarie 
Antoinette, 187 ; with fin- 
gers, 186. 

Eggs, composition of, 17 ; 
digestion of, 31, 33. 



INDEX. 



211 



Entrees, different kinds of, 
117 ; how served, 168 ; 
sauce for, 118 ; travaille'es, 
117, 118. 

Farce in cabbages for soup, 94. 

Fatty substances, digestion 
of, 16, 28. 

Feast, sumptuous, of Queen 
Elentherilide, 153. 

Figs. 115. 

Finger-bowls, 192, 195. 

Fish, digestibihty of, 30, 31, 
33 ; matelote of, 60, 62 , 
nutritive value of, 30. 

Flowers for the table, 170. 

Food, digestibility of differ- 
ent kinds of, 33 ; fried, 
why hurtful, 28 ; properly 
cooked, aids digestion, 28 ; 
variety in, 29. 

Forks, 162 ; how to use at 
table, 158. 

Fowl, nutritive value of, 30 ; 
time required for digestion, 

33. 
French Revolution, cooks of 

the, 108. 
Fried food, injurious, 28 ; 

sole, chapelure for, 22. 
Fruit, eating, at table, 187, 

188 ; nutritive value of, 

32. 
Frying-bath, composition of, 

2 1 ; testing temperature of, 

22. 
Frying, oil for, 22 ; process 

of, 21 ; sole, 22. 
Furniture, in dining-room of 

i8th century, 143. 

Galatine, seasoning for, 57. 
Game, nutritive value of, 30 ; 
seasoning for, 59. 



Garlic in soup, 93, 
Gastronomic Academy, 201 ; 

art, neglected, 201. 
Gelatine, alimentary value 

of, 88. 
Glasses for table use, 163. 
Goose, time required for di- 
^ gestion of, 33. 
Grape-juice for flavoring, 59, 
Grapes in Paris, 36. 
Gridiron, how to use, 20. 

Hors d''o£uz'res, warm and 

cold, 114, 115, 116. 
Hospitality, Russian, 176 ; 

Spanish, 196. 

Indigestion, Brillat - Sava- 

rin on, 3. 
Invitations to dinner, 196, 

199-, returning invitations, 

198. 

Knives, for table, 162 ; how 
to use, 158. 

Laitues au Jus, 50. 

Lamb breaded with cheese, 
no. 

Lemon - juice, in mat ire 
d'hdtel sauce, 102 ; in tea, 
125 ; seasoning for salads, 

71. 

Lettuce, for salads, 67 ; how 
to cook, 49, 

Louis XV., art of delicate 
feasting in time of, 146 ; 
as cook, 9 ; on art of cook- 
ing, 8. 

Magny, admired by George 
Sand, 5 ; restaurant of, 5. 

Maitre dWidtel, duties of, 
168 ; in Paris restaurant, 



212 



INDEX. 



6 ; office of, 7 ; to make 
sauce, 102. 

Matelote of fish, 60, 62. 

Maxims on dining, 1-12. 

Mayonnaise^ by whom in- 
vented, 107; green, 80, 81 ; 
red, 81 ; stirring, 79 ; to 
make, 78, 79. 

Meats, baked, 26 : basting, 
27 ; boiled, digestion of, 
31 ; composition of, 14 ; 
digestibility of different, 
compared, 32, 33 ; extract 
of, 86 ; how to spit, 26 ; 
price of, 14, 15 ; not to be 
roasted in oven, 26 ; raw, 
insipid, 25 ; roast, diges- 
tion of, 31 : salt, compared 
with fresh, 30 ; well-pre- 
pared, increases health, 16 ; 
when to cook, 25. 

Meat-pie, 27. 

Melons, 114. 

Menus, decorated, 113; 
French words in, 114; use 
of, 112 ; theory of, 88, 

113. 

Milk, time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 

Mouth-bowls, 192, 194, 195. 

Mutton, nutritive value of, 
39 ; time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 

Napkins, decoration of, 162; 
how to arrange, 190 ; how 
to use, 161. 

Nutritive foods, most valu- 
able, 30, 31. 

Oven, care of, 26. 

Oysters, flavoring for ra- 
gouts, 64 ; pickled, 64 ; 
time required for digestion 



of. 33 '► I7tli-century ways 
of preparing, 63. 

Paprika, in soup, 95. 

Paratriptics, 120. 

Pease, a la Fran^aise, 47, 

Pepper, best, 71 ; mill for 
grinding, 71. 

Petite Mar/nite, 95. 

Pike, cow^t-bonillon for, 50 ; 
Izaak Walton's remarks 
on, 95. 

Plate, gold and silver, for 
table, 165. 

Pork, time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 

Potage, gras et maigre, 85, 
87. 

Potato salad, 76, 77 ; starch 

in, 37- 

Pot-aii-fezi, meat in, 23 ; of 
Henry Fourth, 93 ; skim- 
ming and straining of, 
91. 

Poule-au-pot, Mile. Fran- 
9oise's, 94. 

Purt'e, defined, 86 ; qualities 
of a good, 89. 

Ragouts, flavoring with pick- 
led oysters, 64 ; 

Ravigote, in mayo7tnaise, 80 j 
to make, 80. 

Reading aloud at table, 162. 

Relish in food, how pro- 
duced, 55. 

Relishes, artificial, 53. 

Restaurateurs of modern 
Paris, formerly cooks in 
noble families, 108 ; of 
the Old World, 6. 

Roasting, meat, 18 ; effect on 
tissue, 24 ; open fire neces- 
sary for, 27. 



INDEX. 



213 



Salad as an aliment, 65 ; 
basket for draining, 69 ; 
bowl for, 6g ; chicory, 74 ; 
cultivating vegetables for, 
67 ; definition of, 65 ; 
French dressing for, 65 ; 
fruit, 65 ; garnish for let- 
tuce, 74 ; how to mix, 70 ; 
how to season, 70 ; Japan- 
ese, 67 ; lettuce and dress- 
ing, 68, 72 ; maceJoine, 77, 
78 ; nutritive value of, 65 ; 
of uncooked vegetables and 
herbs, 67 ; potato, 76, 77 ; 
spoon and fork for, 70 ; 
truffles in, 77 ; usefulness 
of, 66 ; vegetable, 67 ; 
Vendome, 67 ; when to 
eat, 73 ; with game, 75. 

Salt-spoons, 190. 

Sauces, Bearnaise, 99, 100 ; 
blanche, 98 ; Ckdteaii- 
biiand a la maitre d' hoL'l, 
102 ; fine materials neces- 
sary for, 99 ; Gouflfe's, 100 ; 
green, for cold fish and 
meats, loi ; Hollandaise, 
for asparagus, 43 ; 7naitre 
d' hotel, 102 ; Mile. Fran- 
9oise's, 100 ; spoons for 
stirring, 99. 

Sauces, basis of good cook- 
ing, 104 ; classical, 102 ; 
cost of, 105 ; household, 97, 

Satccisson in soup, 94, 

Saufe\ cauliflower, 42, 

Seasoning, business of the 
cook, 53 ; for fish, 57 ; for 
galatine 57 ; perfection of, 

54. 

Soup, care in making,. 89 ; 
croiZtons for, 93 ; different 
names for, 84, 85 •, heavy, 
84 ; Henry Fourth's, 94 ; 



how to serve hot, 96 ; Mile, 

Fran9oise's, 94 ; plates for, 

83 ; rules for making, 92, 

93, 94 ; stock for, 86, 87 ; 

thick or clear, 84 ; use of, 

83, 87 ; velvet, 92 ; velvet 

maigre, 82. 
Spoons, metal, 99 ; salad, 

70; warm, for coffee, 184 ; 

wooden, 99. 
Starch , change of, in digestion , 

38 ; indigestibility of, 37 ; 

in vegetables, 36, 37. 
Steak, Chdleaubriand, to 

cook, 103 ; turning with 

fork, 21. 
Stewing, process of, 21. 

Table, Arthurian Round, 
shape of, 148 ; behavior at, 
181 ; chairs, how to place 
at, 159; cloth for, 159, 
decanters for, 164; decora- 
tions for, 168, 170; dish- 
es for, 166 ; drinking at, 
181 ; etiquette of, 180 ; 
forks for, 162, 187; French 
and English, compared, 
164; glasses for, 163, 173; 
horse -shoe dining, 145; 
how to light, 170; how to 
use forks at, 158 ; how 
to use knives at, 158 ; in 
1 8th century, 143 ; knives 
for, 162 ; New York club- 
house, 148 ; placing guests 
at, 151, 154; plate, gold 
and silver, for, 165, 166 ; 
service a la Francaise, 168 ; 
service h la Rtisse, 168 ; 
silver for, 166 ; utensils 
for, 164, 165 ; waiting at, 
155, 169 ; warm plates for, 
167. 



214 



INDEX. 



Taste, artistic, in eating, 178. 

Tea, action of, on nerves, 
126 ; Audiger's rule for 
preparing, 121 ; decanting 
infusion of, 124 ; English, 
120 ; hygienic manner of 
preparing, 123 ; infusion 
of, 124 ; lemon in, 125 ; 
loaf-sugar in, 131 ; poison- 
ous element in, 123 ; pre- 
pared in small quantities, 
124; properties of, 121; 
sugar and milk in, 125 ; 
when to be taken, 122. 

Teapots, 125. 

Timbales, 116. 

Toothpicks, 181, 183, 184. 

Tripe, time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 

Trout, time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 

Turkey, time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 

Veal, time required for di- 
gestion of, 33. 



Vegetables, boiling of dried, 
37 ; digestion of, 31 ; dry, 
how cooked, 36 ; for salad, 
67 ; in Paris, 35 ; \npotages 
jfiaigres, 85 ; nutritive value 
of, 32 ; preserving color of 
cooked, 38, 39 : rafraichir^ 
39 ; season to use, 35 ; to 
sweeten bitter, 40. 

Venison, nutritive value of, 
30. 

Vinegar, tarragon, for salad- 
dressing, 74 ; in Bearnaise, 
loi ; to prepare, 74. 

Waiters, at Cafe Anglais, 
205; male, 154; Tartar, 
205. 

Wine, champagne, how to 
serve, 174 ; classical meth- 
od of serving, 172 ; decant- 
ers for, 164; for sauce, 60; 
glasses for, 163 ; in cook- 
ing, 59 ; kitchen, 60 ; too 
many kinds of, at table, 
173- 



THE END. 



SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 

Travelling Notes in Europe. By THEODORE 
Child, Author of " Delicate Feasting." 
pp. vi., 304. Post 8vo, Cloth, Orna- 
mental, $1 25. 



A delightful book of notes of European travel. . . . Mr. 
Child is an art critic, and takes us into the picture-galleries, 
but we never get any large and painful doses of art informa- 
tion from this skilful and discriminating guide. There is 
not a page of his book that approaches to dull reading. — 
N. Y. Sun. 

Mr. Child is a shrewd observer and writer of an engag- 
ing style. He interests the reader with abundant informa- 
tion, and pleases him by his lively manner in communicating 
it. — Hartford Courant. 

Mr. Child is always a brilliant and interesting writer, and 
his sketches of travels are invariably picturesque and ani- 
mated in style. — Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston. 

Mr. Child is a very agreeable travelling companion, and 
his choice of places for a summer ramble is excellent. . . . 
The French chapters — on Limoges, Reims, Aix-les-Bains, 
and especially the voyage on French rivers — are abundant 
in novelty and odd bits of interest, as well as in beauty of 
scene and sympathy. — Nation, N. Y. 

The author gives glimpses of many by-ways which the 
ordinary tourist never dreams of. He is, moreover, a phi- 
losopher, something of a poet, a good judge of art and ar- 
chitecture, and, finally, a cosmopolitan with catholic tastes, 
but with an eager curiosity which no amount of sight-seeing 
can ever sate. — San Francisco Chronicle. 

A very pleasant volume of sketches by an accomplished 
traveller, v/ho knows how to see and how to describe, and 
who can give real information without wearisome detail. — 
Providence Journal. 

Mr. Child's notes have not only the charm of a practised 
and graceful pen, but that of unusual originality of theme 
to recommend them. — New Haven Palladium. 



Published by HARPER & BROT'iERS, New York. 

The above work sent by tnail, postage prepaid, to any part of the 
United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 



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